IRISH    LITERARY    AND 
MUSICAL    STUDIES 


IRISH     LITERARY    AND 
MUSICAL    STUDIES 


ALFRED    PERCEVAL   GRAVES,    M.A. 

(••CANWR  CILARN£") 

President  oj  tke  Irak  Literary  Society  of  London, 

Honorary  Member  of  the  National  Literary  Society,  and  one  oj  tke 

Fonder*  and  Member  of  Executive  of  the  Folk  Song  Socirty, 

and  of  tht  Iritk  and  Welsh  Folk  Song  Societies 


NEW    YORK 

CHARLES    SCRIBNER'S    SONS 

M  CM  XIV 


DEDICA  TION 

These  Essays  on  Irish  and  Celtic  Poetry  and  Music,  and 
these  Reminiscences  and  Studies  of  the  writings  of  Nineteenth 
Century  Irish  Poets  and  Musicians — Mangan  and  Bunting, 
known  to,  and  Petrie,  beloved  of  my  father — -Joseph  Sheridan 
Le  Fanu,  Sir  Samuel  Ferguson  and  William  Allingham,  his 
friends  and  mine  from  my  boyhood  to  middle  manhood — of 
Tennyson,  to  whom  my  uncle,  Robert  Perceval  Graves,  had 
been  host  at  Windcrmert,  and  to  whom  I  was  guest  at  Kilkee — 
and,  lastly,  of  Patrick  Weston  Joyce,  for  forty  years  my 
generous  musical  and  literary  ally — I  dedicate  to  my  good 
friends  and  colleagues,  "  those  kindred  Irish  spirits  banded 
together  to  tend  the  flame  of  national  pride  in  the  heart  of 
London"  the  members  of  the  Irish  Literary  Society. 

A.  P.  G. 
Julyy.,  1913. 


2060711 


PREFACE 

THE  Irish  Literary  and  Musical  Studies  contained  in  this 
volume  consist  of  revised  versions  of  lectures  delivered  from 
time  to  time  before  the  Irish  Literary  Society  of  London,  the 
Royal  Literary  Society,  the  National  Literary  Society  of 
Dublin,  the  National  Eisteddfod  at  Carnarvon,  the  students 
of  Alexandra  College,  Dublin,  and  the  Belfast  Philosophical 
Society ;  also  of  revised  versions  of  articles  and  reviews  in 
The  Contemporary  Review  ("Celtic  Nature  Poetry"),  The 
Diiblin  Review  ("  Early  Irish  Religious  Poetry  "  and  "  The 
Preternatural  in  Early  Irish  Poetry"),  TJie  Cornhill Magazine 
("  Tennyson  in  Ireland  "  and  "  James  Clarence  Mangan  "), 
The  Spectator  ("The  English  Spoken  in  Ireland,"  "The 
Religious  Songs  of  Connacht,"  "  An  Irish  Wonder  Book  " 
and  "  Edward  Bunting  "),  and  A  Treasury  of  Irish  Litei'ature 
in  the  English  Tongue  ("  Sir  Samuel  Ferguson  "),  published 
by  Smith,  Elder  and  Co.,  to  whose  editors  and  publishers  I 
gratefully  acknowledge  permission  to  republish  them. 

My  original  verse  translations  from  the  Irish  contained 
in  the  articles  on  "  Celtic  Nature  Poetry,"  "  Early  Irish 
Religious  Poetry,"  and  "The  Preternatural  in  Early  Irish 
Poetry,"  and  many  others,  by  my  own  and  other  hands,  will 
appear  in  an  anthology  of  English  verse  renderings  of  Irish 
Poetry  entitled  Harpstrings  of  the  Irish  Gael,  with  some 
twenty  illustrations  in  colour,  Celtic  capital  letters,  and  a 
cover  of  Celtic  design  by  George  Morrow,  to  be  published 
coincidently  with  this  volume  by  the  Devin-Adair  Company 
of  437,  Fifth  Avenue,  New  York. 

ALFRED  PERCEVAL  GRAVES. 

ERINFA,  HARLECH,  N.  WALES. 
July  31,  1913. 


CONTENTS 

PAGE 

TENNYSON  IN  IRELAND i 

THE  ENGLISH  SPOKEN  IN  IRELAND 12 

JAMES  CLARENCE  MANGAN  .......      19 

SIR  SAMUEL  FERGUSON 36 

JOSEPH  SHERIDAN  LE  FANU        .        .        .        .        .        -Si 

WILLIAM  ALLINGHAM 70 

EARLY  IRISH  RELIGIOUS  POETRY         .....     101 

THE  RELIGIOUS  SONGS  OF  CONNACHT 122 

CELTIC  NATURE  POETRY 128 

THE  PRETERNATURAL  IN  EARLY  IRISH  POETRY  .         .         .143 

DR.  JOYCE'S  IRISH  WONDER  BOOK 166 

FOLK  SONG 175 

EDWARD  BUNTING 191 

GEORGE  PETRIE  AS  AN  ARTIST  AND  MAN  OF  LETTERS  .  200 
GEORGE  PETRIE  AS  AN  ANTIQUARY  .  .  .  .  .214 
GEORGE  PETRIE  AS  A  MUSICIAN  AND  AMONGST  HIS  FRIENDS  231 


IRISH 
LITERARY  AND  MUSICAL  STUDIES 

TENNYSON    IN    IRELAND 
A  REMINISCENCE 

IT  was  the  summer  of  1878.  A  gale  from  the  south-west, 
after  breaking  suddenly  over  the  iron-bound  coast  of  Clare, 
and  raging  against  it  furiously  for  forty-eight  hours,  had  just 
died  away. 

Scarcely  a  breath  of  air  was  stirring,  and  the  August  sky 
was  intensely  blue.  Yet  the  great  Atlantic  billows,  gathering 
out  of  the  sea  distance  at  ever  increasing  intervals,  still 
boomed  and  smoked  against  the  cliffs — the  last  sullen 
thunders  of  ocean's  retreating  insurgency. 

But  the  proverbial  ill  wind  that  had  kept  all  but  the 
most  venturesome  spirits  close  prisoners  in  the  "  lodges " 
of  Kilkee  had  blown  the  storm-loving  Tennyson  over  from 
Foynes,  where  he  and  his  son  Hallam  were  the  guests  of 
Lord  and  Lady  Monteagle. 

So  far  back  as  September  1842  he  had  written  to  Aubrey 
de  Vere  from  Killarney  :  "  I  have  been  to  your  Ballybunion 
Caves,  but  could  not  get  into  the  finest  on  account  of  the 
weather."  But  in  one  of  these  caves,  so  his  son  now 
records,  "  he  made  the  following  lines,  which  occur  in 
Merlin  and  Vivien  : 

So  dark  a  forethought  rolled  about  his  brain, 
As  on  a  dull  day  in  an  ocean  cave 
The  blind  wave  feeling  round  his  long  sea-hall 
In  silence." 


2  IRISH    LITERARY   AND    MUSICAL   STUDIES 

In  the  year  1848  he  had  written  to  de  Vere,  "  I  hear 
that  there  are  larger  waves  at  Bude  than  on  any  other  part 
of  the  British  coast ;  and  I  must  go  hither  and  be  alone  with 
God";  but  his  friend  persuaded  him  to  come  to  Ireland, 
where  the  waves  are  far  higher  and  the  cliffs  often  rise  to 
800  feet,  and  in  one  spot,  Slieve  League,  to  2,000. 

On  his  way  to  Valencia  he  slept  at  Mount  Trenchard, 
the  residence  of  Lord  Monteagle,  and,  de  Vere  continues, 
"  I  led  him  to  the  summit  of  Knock  Patrick,  the  farthest 
spot  in  the  south-west  to  which  Ireland's  apostle,  patriarch, 
and  patron  advanced. 

".  .  .  The  sunset  was  one  of  extraordinary  but  minatory 
beauty.  It  gave,  I  remember,  a  darksome  glory  to  the 
vast  and  desolate  expanse  with  all  its  creeks  and  inlets  from 
the  Shannon,  lighted  the  green  islands  in  the  mouth  of  the 
Fergus,  and  fired  the  ruined  castle  of  Shanid,  a  stronghold 
of  the  Desmonds.  .  .  . 

"  The  western  clouds  hung  low,  a  mass  of  crimson  and 
gold ;  while  from  the  ledge  of  a  nearer  one,  down  plunged 
a  glittering  flood  empurpled  like  wine.  The  scene  was  a 
thoroughly  Irish  one,  and  gave  a  stormy  welcome  to  the 
Sassenach  bard.  The  next  morning  he  pursued  his  way 
alone  to  Valencia.  He  soon  wrote  that  he  had  enjoyed  it. 
He  had  found  there  the  highest  waves  that  Ireland  knows, 
cliffs  that  at  one  spot  rise  to  the  height  of  600  feet, 
tamarisks  and  fuchsias  that  no  sea-winds  can  intimidate,  and 
the  old  '  Knight  of  Kerry,'  as  chivalrous  a  representative  of 
Desmond's  great  Norman  House  as  it  had  ever  put 
forth." 

And  now,  a  generation  afterwards,  and  having  found  his 
full  fame  in  the  interval,  Tennyson  was  paying  his  third  and 
last  visit  to  Ireland,  and  again  revisiting  "  Kilkee  by  the 
great  deeps,"  for  a  letter  from  him  to  de  Vere  in  October 
1848  containing  this  phrase  seems  to  show  he  had  visited 
the  spot  in  the  previous  summer,  when  the  guest  of  his, 
brother  poet  at  Curragh  Chase. 


TENNYSON    IN    IRELAND  3 

"  I  am  glad,"  he  writes,  "  that  you  have  thought  of  me  at 
Kilkee  by  the  great  deeps.     The  sea  is  my  delight" 

The  intelligence  of  Tennyson's  arrival  at  Moore's 
Hotel  had  spread  rapidly,  and  on  the  splendid  forenoon  in 
question  it  was  very  noticeable  what  a  number  of  the 
Laureate's  slim  green  volumes  were  in  evidence  on  the 
terraces  and  up  the  cliff  side  in  the  hands  which  had  been 
swinging  a  racquet  in  the  fine  weather  of  a  few  days  before. 
"These  Limerick  girls,"  remarked  a  local  wit,  "are 
growing  more  fickle  than  ever.  Yesterday  they  had  lawn- 
tennis  on.  To-day  they  have  Alfred  Tennyson." 

Bathing  had  been  out  of  the  question  for  a  couple  of 
days,  so  it  was  with  a  keen  sense  of  exhilaration  that  I,  a 
visitor  to  Kilkee  at  the  time,  again  found  myself  on  the 
Duggena  spring-board.  I  plunged,  and  was  in  mid 
career,  when,  rounding  a  reef  corner,  I  all  but  knocked 
heads  with  another  swimmer. 
"  Beg  your  pardon,  sir." 

"  Not  at  all,  sir !  but— yes !     What !     You  here  ?    Why, 
how  long  have  you  been  in  these  parts  ?  " 
"About  ten  days,  J.  G.  !" 
"  Very  odd,  we've  not  met  before,  then  ?  " 
"  Not  at  all.     I've  been  purposely  avoiding  you." 
"  That  doesn't  sound  very  friendly." 
"  Perhaps  not,  but  my  intention  was  particularly  so." 
"  Explain ! " 

"  Well,  the  fact  is,  I  heard  you  were  showing  Tennyson 
the  sights;  and  knowing  how  shy  he  is  of  strangers,  I 
thought  the  most  friendly  thing  I  could  do  was  to  steer  clear 
of  your  party." 

"  My  dear  fellow,  I'll  make  that  all  right." 
And  he  did  within  a  few  hours ;  for  that  afternoon  I  got 
a  note  from  him  saying,  "  Tennyson  hopes  you  will  spend 
the  evening  with  us.  Don't  bother  about  dressing.  Come 
just  as  you  are,  if  not  exactly  just  as  you  were  when  last 
we  met." 


4  IRISH   LITERARY   AND   MUSICAL   STUDIES 

The  writer  was  my  old  friend  John  George  Butcher,  now 
a  well-known  figure  at  the  English  Bar  and  in  the  House  of 
Commons. 

On  the  outbreak  of  the  storm  he  and  his  two  sisters  had 
run  over  from  Mount  Trenchard,  their  brother-in-law  Lord 
Monteagle's  country  seat,  in  company  with  Tennyson  and 
his  son  Hallam,  and  I  found  this  party  awaiting  me  at 
Moore's  Hotel.  Tennyson  received  me,  beaming,  evidently 
thorougly  amused  at  my  marine  encounter  with  Butcher  that 
morning.  He  offered  me  a  long  pipe,  pressed  me  into  a 
chair  at  his  right  hand,  and  plunged  into  animated 
conversation. 

His  personality  more  than  satisfied  me,  though  I  had 
been  led  to  anticipate  much  from  Mrs.  Cameron's  and 
Rejlander's  artistic  photographs. 

"  The  large  dark  eyes,  generally  dreamy,  but  with  an 
occasional  gleam  of  imaginative  alertness,"  as  de  Vere 
describes  them,  still  varied  between  haunting  softness  and 
eager  brightness ;  "  the  great  shock  of  rough  dusky  dark 
hair,"  that  Carlyle  wrote  of  in  1842,  had  been  somewhat 
subdued,  but  far  from  subjugated  by  time;  it  revealed 
more  of  the  poet's  "  high-built  brow,"  but  its  raven  hue  was 
unimpaired.  "  The  massive  aquiline  face  "  was  still  "  most 
massive,  yet  most  delicate,"  and  still  of  a  healthy  bronze. 
His  gestures  were  free  and  spontaneous,  his  voice  full  and 
musical.  It  was  impossible  to  believe  he  was  in  his 
seventieth  year. 

His  accent  and  speech  both  surprised  me.  I  was  quite 
prepared  for  the  fastidious  articulation  and  premeditated 
hesitation  in  the  choice  of  words  to  which  so  many  distin- 
guished English  University  men  are  prone.  There  was  a 
rich  burr  in  his  accent,  Lincolnshire,  I  suppose,  and  a 
pungent  directness  in  his  utterance  which  were  as  refreshing 
as  they  were  unlocked  for. 

Then  he  evidently  possessed  the  rare  knack  of  getting 
the  very  best  out  of  his  fellow  talkers  at  the  same  time  that 


TENNYSON    IN    IRELAND  5 

he   gave  them   much  more   than  he   got  for   it.      At  this 
interval  of  time  I  cannot,  of  course,  do  more  than  record 
the  general  drift  of  our  conversation  and  the  opinions  he 
expressed;   his  exact  words  have  escaped  me,  except  in  an 
occasional  instance.     First  we  talked  of  the  sea,  and  here 
he  spoke  notably.     He  said  that  a  great  storm,  such  as  we 
had  witnessed,  was  a  wonderful  and  terrible  sight  of  im- 
potent passion,  and  he  quoted  St.  Jude's  words,  "  Raging 
waves  of  the  sea,  foaming  out  their  own  shame."     But  he 
had  once  seen  roll  in  out  of  the  Atlantic,  suddenly,  over  a 
still  sea  and  under  a  still  sky,  a  succession  of  stupendous 
b.llows,    earthquake    waves     perhaps,    which     completely 
engulfed   the  shore,    and  whose   awful    serenity   impressed 
his  imagination  far  more  deeply  than  any  tempest  he  had 
ever  experienced.     It  is  easy  for  all  who  have  heard  him 
thus  discourse  to  believe,  as  we  are  now  told  by  his  son 
that  he  claimed  a  Norse  ancestry,  « that  he  loved  the  sea 
for  its  own  sake,  and  also  because  English  heroism  has  ever 
been    conspicuous  on  shipboard,"  and   that   he  "gloried," 
therefore,  in  having  made  these  lines  in  Boadicea: 

Fear  not,  isle  of  blowing  woodland,  isle  of  silvery  parapets  I 
Thine  the  liberty,  thine  the  glory,  thine  the  deeds  to  be  celebrated 
Thine  the  myriad-rolling  ocean,  light  and  shadow  illimitable  ; 
and — 

Roared  as  when  the  roaring  breakers   boom  and  blanch  on  the 
precipices. 

When  thus  talking  of  the  storm  to  me  he  rolled  out  a 
line  from  Homer,  and  challenged  Butcher,  a  fine  Greek 
scholar,  to  say  where  it  came  from.  I  should  imagine  that 
it  was 

<?£  a.Ka\a.ppt(rao  PaBvppoov  uxtdvoio, 

a  favourite  example  to  him  of  sounding  lines,  according  to 
his  son.     This  line  and  the  well-known 


6  IRISH    LITERARY   AND    MUSICAL   STUDIES 

he  would  say,  are  grander  in  our  modern  Northern  pro- 
nunciation than  in  the  soft  Southern  talk  of  the  Greeks, 
with  a  difference  as  between  the  roar  of  the  Northern  sea 
and  the  hissing  of  the  Mediterranean. 

The  rugged,  open-throated,  deep-chested  vocalisation  of 
his  own  north-eastern  folk,  which  he  himself  so  finely 
illustrated  by  his  chanting  of  verse,  when  gathered  into  the 
grandly  rolling  Yorkshire  choruses,  affords  a  similar  contrast 
to  the  smoother  and  softer  but  thinner  and  sharper  concerted 
singing  of  southern  England. 

In  this  connection  his  son's  biography  of  Tennyson  may 
well  be  quoted : 

"  He  never  cared  greatly  for  the  sea  on  the  south  coast 
of  England;  not  a  grand  sea,"  he  would  say,  "only  an 
angry  curt  sea.  It  seems  to  shriek  as  it  recoils  with  the 
pebbles  along  the  shore ;  the  finest  seas  I  have  ever  seen 
are  at  Valencia,  Mablethorpe,  and  in  West  Cornwall.  At 
Valencia  the  sea  was  grand,  without  any  wind  blowing  and 
seemingly  without  a  wave  ;  but  with  the  momentum  of  the 
Atlantic  behind,  it  dashes  up  into  foam,  blue  diamonds  it 
looks  like,  all  along  the  rocks,  like  ghosts  playing  at  hide 
and  seek.  When  I  was  in  Cornwall  it  had  blown  a  storm 
of  wind  and  rain  for  days,  and  all  of  a  sudden  fell  into 
perfect  calm  ;  I  was  a  little  inland  of  the  cliffs  ;  when  after 
a  space  of  perfect  silence,  a  long  roll  of  thunder,  from  some 
wave  rushing  into  a  cavern  I  suppose,  came  up  from  the 
distance,  and  died  away.  I  never  felt  silence  like  that." 

He  talked  a  good  deal  of  that  visit  to  Kerry,  of  the 
scenery  and  of  the  people. 

It  was  in  1848,  the  year  of  revolutions,  and  the  political 
electricity  had  even  penetrated  to  Valencia ;  and  Tennyson, 
while  studying  the  Alantic  breakers  from  the  mountain,  was 
cautiously  followed  up  by  a  conspirator,  attracted  no  doubt 
by  his  distinctly  un-English  dress  and  appearance.  The 
man  finally  closed  upon  Tennyson  and  whispered  in  his 
ear,  "Be  you  from  France?"  I  could  narrate  a  similar 


TENNYSON    IN    IRELAND  7 

experience.  When  in  Fenian  times  my  father  (afterwards  the 
Bishop  of  Limerick)  and  I  were  belated  during  an  archaeo- 
logical ramble  in  an  Irish-speaking  part  of  Kerry,  our 
nocturnal  appearance  at  a  remote  homestead  led  to  a 
guarded  inquiry  whether  the  French  fleet  were  in  the  Bay, 
as  reported — so  expressed  as  to  convey  the  belief  that  our 
coming  was  in  some  way  connected  with  it. 

Tennyson  was  evidently  greatly  interested  in  the  Irish 
play  of  character,  and  in  its  dramatic  as  well  as  its  humorous 
side.  He  told  us  of  his  drive  to  see  a  waterfall  on  Hungry 
Hill,  and  of  an  amusing  conversation  he  had  with  the 
carman,  a  Celt  of  the  type  of  Daniel  O'Connell,  or — to  take 
an  instance  from  our  day— of  Denis  O'Sullivan,  the  "Shamus 
O'Brien  "  of  Stanford's  opera,  so  distinguished-looking  indeed 
that  when  he  claimed  the  closest  connection  with  the  great 
old  families  of  McCarthy  More  and  The  O'Sullivan  Bear, 
and  emphasised  the  statement  by  the  production  of  a 
ponderous  old  seal  containing  their  arms  quartered  together, 
Tennyson  felt  quite  inclined  to  believe  his  final  contention 
that  if  he  had  his  rights  he  should  be  reigning  in  these  parts. 
"  He  looked  an  Irish  chief,"  said  Tennyson ;  'and  though 
the  poet  did  not  tell  me  so  at  the  time,  his  driver,  it  appears, 
on  being  rallied  by  the  waiter  after  returning  to  the  inn 
from  which  they  had  driven,  for  talking  to  the  gentleman 
of  his  "great  blood,"  drew  himself  up,  answering,  "The 
gentleman  is  a  gentleman,  every  inch  of  him."  Noblesse 
oblige,  and  on  that  drive  in  search  of  one  waterfall  it  had 
rained  such  cataracts  that  they  were  fain  to  take  shelter  in  a 
wretched  little  roadside  shealing  occupied  by  a  poor  woman 
and  her  little  son  Johnny.  To  use  Tennyson's  own  words 
as  given  by  his  son  : 

"  The  '  King  of  Connaught '  dried  my  stockings  and 
went  to  sleep  on  a  bench.  The  woman  drew  me  up  a  stool 
to  the  turf  fire  with  the  courtly  air  of  a  queen.  While  he 
was  asleep,  I  heard  the  mother  say  to  the  boy  '  Johnny,' 
several  times  (she  didn't  speak  a  word  of  English).  The 


8  IRISH    LITERARY    AND    MUSICAL   STUDIES 

King  awoke,  and,  as  we  were  going  out,  I  said,  '  Johnny,' 
and  the  little  boy  with  a  protuberant  paunch  (protuberant,  I 
suppose,  from  eating  potatoes)  ran  forward  and  I  gave  him 
a  sixpence.  The  woman,  with  her  black  hair  over  her 
shoulders,  and  her  eyes  streaming  with  tears,  passionately 
closed  her  hands  over  the  boy's  hand  in  which  was  the  six- 
pence. When  the  King  and  I  climbed  into  the  car,  I,  in 
my  stupid  Saxon  way,  thinking  it  was  the  beggarly  sixpence 
that  had  made  the  woman  grateful,  expressed  my  astonish- 
ment at  such  gratitude.  '  It  was  not  the  sixpence,  your 
honour,  it  was  the  stranger's  gift.'" 

My  recollection  of  the  story  as  told  to  me  is  a  slight 
variant  upon  this  version.  According  to  it  the  woman  cried 
out  something  in  Irish,  and  Tennyson  asked  the  driver  for  its 
meaning  when  they  got  outside,  on  which  he  replied,  "She was 
blessing  God,  your  honour,  that  the  child's  hand  had  been 
crossed  with  silver  by  the  dark-haired  stranger."  And  certainly 
I  don't  remember  in  Tennyson's  version  of  the  story  as  told 
me  that  claim  to  the  kingdom  of  Connaught  was  made  by  the 
driver.  Even  in  fun  a  McCarthy  or  an  O'Sullivan  would 
never  have  advanced  such  a  claim.  Tennyson  saw  I  was 
much  affected  by  his  story,  which  was  very  strikingly  told, 
and  said,  "  There  !  you  must  make  a  poem  out  of  '  the 
Stranger's  Gift.'  "  He  went  on  to  say  that  he  much  desired 
to  write  an  Irish  poem,  and  was  on  the  look-out  for  a 
suitable  subject.  Could  I  make  a  suggestion  ? 

I  ran  over  in  my  mind  the  themes  with  which  I  was 
familiar,  and  suddenly  bethought  me  of  my  friend  Dr. 
Joyce's  Old  Celtic  Romances,  some  of  which  he  had  shown 
me  in  manuscript  and  which  were  to  be  published  in  a  few 
months'  time. 

I  told  him  of  these,  and  undertook  that  he  should  have 
an  early  copy  of  the  book.  When  it  appeared  I  took  care 
to  fulfil  my  promise.  Tennyson's  Voyage  of  Maeldune  was 
the  outcome.  In  his  notes  quoted  by  his  son  he  writes,  "  I 
read  the  legend  in  Joyce's  Celtic  Legends"  (it  should  be 


TENNYSON    IN    IRELAND  9 

Joyce's  Old  Celtic  Romances),  "  but  most  of  the  details  are 
mine."  His  biographer  adds,  "By  this  story  he  intended 
to  represent  in  his  own  original  way  the  Celtic  genius,  and 
he  wrote  the  poem  with  a  genuine  love  of  the  peculiar 
exuberance  of  the  Irish  imagination." 

When  telling  Tennyson  of  Joyce's  book,  several  of  the 
tales  in  which  relate  to  Finn  and  his  heroic  companions,  I 
had  hoped  he  would  have  treated  one  of  them,  by  choice 
Oisin  (Ossian)  in  Tirnanoge  (The  Land  of  Youth)  rather 
than  The  Voyage  of  Maeldune.  For  the  mention  of  Ossian 
had  started  him  off  into  an  expression  of  admiration  for 
some  passages  in  Macpherson's  work  for  which  I  was  not 
prepared. 

"  Listen  to  this,"  he  said  : 

"  '  O  thou  that  rollest  above,  round  as  the  shield  of  my 
fathers !  Whence  are  thy  beams,  O  sun  !  thy  everlasting 
light  ?  Thou  comest  forth  in  thy  awful  beauty ;  the  stars 
hide  themselves  in  the  sky ;  the  moon,  cold  and  pale,  sinks 
in  the  western  wave ;  but  thou  thyself  movest  alone.  Who 
can  be  a  companion  of  thy  course?  The  oaks  of  the 
mountains  fall ;  the  mountains  themselves  decay  with  years ; 
the  ocean  shrinks  and  grows  again ;  the  moon  herself  is 
lost  in  heaven ;  but  thou  art  for  ever  the  same,  rejoicing  in 
the  brightness  of  thy  course.  When  the  world  is  dark  with 
tempest,  when  thunder  rolls  and  lightning  flies,  thou  lookest 
in  thy  beauty  from,  the  clouds,  and  laughest  at  the  storm. 
But  to  Ossian  thou  lookest  in  vain,  for  he  beholds  thy  beams 
no  more;  whether  thy  yellow  hair  flows  in  the  eastern 
clouds,  or  thou  tremblest  at  the  gates  of  the  west.  .  .  .'" 

"  Is  it  not  fine  ? "  he  said.  I  owned  it  was,  but  have 
never  ceased  to  regret  that  the  much  finer,  older,  and  truer 
Irish  Ossianic  gold,  such  as  that,  for  example,  which  glitters 
in  the  pages  of  Standish  Hayes  O'Grady's  Silva  Gadelica 
had  not  been  earlier  open  to  him.  Had  it  been,  I  make  no 
doubt  he  would  have  given  us  a  saga  immeasurably  more 
true  to  the  Celtic  spirit  than  his  Voyage  of  Maeldune 


10  IRISH    LITERARY   AND    MUSICAL   STUDIES 

delightful  though  that  poem  is  in  itself,  and  deeply 
interesting  though  it  is  as  a  great  English  poet's  attempt  to 
express  the  Celtic  genius.  To  compare  Tennyson's  finished 
poem  with  the  Irish  tale  from  which  he  took  it  is  a 
novel  experience.  I  own  I  share  Mr.  Stopford  Brooke's 
opinion  as  to  which  of  them  is  the  simpler  and  the  more 
convincing. 

Tennyson's  other  Irish  poem,  To-morrow,  was  founded 
on  the  story  told  him  by  Aubrey  de  Vere :  "  The  body  of 
a  young  man  was  laid  out  on  the  grass  by  the  door  of  a 
chapel  in  the  West  of  Ireland,  and  an  old  woman  came  and 
recognised  it  as  that  of  her  young  lover,  who  had  been  lost 
in  a  peat  bog  many  years  before ;  the  peat  having  kept  him 
fresh  and  fair  as  when  she  last  saw  him." 

His  son  notes :  "  He  corrected  his  Irish  from  Carleton's 
admirable  Traits  of  the  Irish  Peasantry,  a  proof  of  the 
poet's  extraordinary  laboriousness,  and  a  crying  comment 
on  the  want  of  an  Anglo-Irish  or  Hiberno-English  dialect 
dictionary.  Tennyson  certainly  could  not  have  written 
that  intensely  dramatic  poem  had  he  not  been  deeply 
sensible  of  the  tragic  side  of  Irish  peasant  life  as  he  saw  it 
with  his  own  eyes  so  shortly  after  the  potato  famine.  How 
gracefully,  too,  he  presses  into  his  service  the  poetic  imagery 
of  the  Western  Gael.  It  is,  moreover,  an  interesting  asser- 
tion of  his  belief  in  the  artistic  value  of  Irish  dialect  in 
verse ;  Irish  Doric,  as  he  once  wrote  of  it  to  me. 

But  to  go  back  to  our  conversation,  which  had  turned 
upon  the  preternatural,  whether  through  the  superstitious 
touch  in  the  story  of  The  Stranger's  Gift  or  because 
something  was  said  of  Macpherson's  ghost  machinery,  I 
cannot  recollect.  Tennyson  acknowledged  to  having  taken 
a  very  deep  interest  in  spiritualism,  but  he  added  that, 
though  he  could  not  account  for  some  of  the  phenomena 
he  had  witnessed,  investigation  had  led  him  to  no  valuable 
results,  and  he  had  therefore  dropped  it.  Truth  and 
falsehood  were  evidently  woven  strangely  together  in  the 


TENNYSON    IN    IRELAND  II 

minds  of  the  mediums,  who  he  believed  corresponded  to 
the  mediaeval  witches.  He  instanced  in  support  of  this 
view  the  record  of  an  old  witch  trial  at  which  violent 
manifestations  occurred  in  full  court  similar  to  the  so-called 
"  spirit  rappings  "  of  recent  stances. 

He  went  on  to  say  that  witches  had,  under  torture, 
confessed  to  the  most  preposterous  doings,  such  as  having 
suckled  young  devils. 

The  talk  then  turned  to  national  education,  and  he 
seemed  eager  for  practical  instances  of  its  enlightening 
effects  upon  the  people,  derived  from  my  personal 
knowledge  as  an  inspector  of  schools.  A  generation 
previously  he  had  said  that  "one  of  the  two  great  social 
problems  impending  was  the  housing  and  education  of  the 
poor  man  before  making  him  our  master ;  the  other  was 
the  Higher  Education  of  Women,"  to  which  his  Princess 
served  as  a  pioneer. 

"Wasn't  the  Bard  great?"  said  Butcher  when  we  met 
next  morning. 

Readers  of  his  son's  noble  memoir,  all  the  world  over, 
will  answer  that  question  as  emphatically  as  I  did. 


IRISH   LITERARY   AND    MUSICAL   STUDIES 


THE   ENGLISH    SPOKEN    IN    IRELAND* 

DR.  JOYCE'S  literary  vitality  is  as  remarkable  as  his  literary 
versatility.  Sixty  years  ago  he  was  contributing  Irish  folk- 
songs and  notes  on  Irish  dances  to  Dr.  Petrie's  Ancient 
Music  of  Ireland.  In  his  spare  hours  when  an  active 
teacher,  Professor,  and  Training  College  Principal  he  pro- 
duced what  have  since  become  standard  works  on  Irish 
school  method  and  Irish  names  of  places ;  and  since  his 
retirement  from  the  Government  Service  some  twenty  years 
ago  he  has  kept  his  literary  energy  fresh  by  turning  from 
folk-lore  to  folk-song,  and  from  archaeology  to  history.  His 
Irish  historical  writings  exhibit  close  research  and  impartial 
judgment.  His  Old  Celtic  Romances  inspired  Tennyson's 
Voyage  of  Maeldune;  and,  when  the  artistic  vigour  of 
Sir  Edward  Burne-Jones  had,  for  the  time  being,  failed,  the 
study  of  these  Romances  gave  it  renewed  life,  by  the 
painter's  own  confession. 

To  Dr.  Joyce's  first  collection  of  Irish  folk-songs  Sir 
Charles  Stanford  and  Dr.  Charles  Wood  are  indebted  for 
Irish  melodies  harmonised  by  them,  and  popularised  by  the 
singing  of  Mr.  Plunket  Greene;  and  Dr.  Joyce  has  quite 
recently  edited  his  musical  opus  magnum,  a  collection  of  no 
less  than  eight  hundred  and  forty-two  Irish  airs  and  songs 
hitherto  unpublished.  And  now,  taking  a  fresh  departure, 
he  presents  us,  in  a  popular  form,  with  the  first  detailed 
analysis  and  systematic  classification  of  Anglo-Irish  speech. 

*  English  as  We  Speak  it  in  Ireland.      By  P.  W.  Joyce,  LL.D., 
M.R.I. A.,  etc.    London  :  Longmans  and  Co.     [2s.  6d.  net.] 


THE    ENGLISH    SPOKEN    IN    IRELAND  13 

He  has  been  for  more  than  twenty  years  quietly  gathering 
the  materials  for  this  book,  with  unique  qualifications  and 
opportunities  for  the  undertaking.  For  he  spoke  both  Irish 
and  English  as  a  boy,  and  during  his  days  at  Marlborough 
Street  Training  College  had  unequalled  chances  for  inquiry 
into  the  differences  of  speech  exhibited  by  the  students 
under  his  care,  who  came  from  "  all  the  four  corners  of 
Erin."  But  he  did  not  make  any  serious  preparation  to 
write  upon  the  English  spoken  in  Ireland  till  1892,  when 
he  invited,  through  the  medium  of  the  Press,  the  contribu- 
tion of  collections  of  dialectical  words  and  phrases  to  a 
projected  book  on  the  subject.  In  response  to  this  appeal 
he  received  such  collections  from  no  less  than  a  hundred 
and  sixty-four  persons  in  all  parts  of  Ireland  and  Great 
Britain,  and  even  in  America,  Australia,  and  New  Zealand. 
He  has,  furthermore,  studied  the  works  of  the  leading 
writers  who  make  use  of  different  forms  of  Anglo-Irish  and 
Hiberno-English  dialect,  and  quotes  from  them  at  large. 
Finally,  he  has  digested,  and  refers  to,  all  the  articles  and 
pamphlets  on  the  subject  of  his  book  published  up  to  date. 

Dr.  Joyce's  treatment  of  this  considerable  mass  of 
material  is  both  scholarly  and  attractive.  The  book  con- 
tains many  humorous  personal  reminiscences,  more  especi- 
ally in  the  chapters  devoted  to  "  The  Devil  and  his  Territory," 
"  Swearing,"  "Proverbs,"  "  Exaggeration  and  Redundancy," 
and  "  The  Memory  of  History  and  Old  Customs,"  all  of 
which  are  pervaded  with  the  peculiarly  dry  form  of  fun 
for  which  Dr.  Joyce  has  established  a  reputation.  But  the 
special  value  of  his  volume  is  its  authoritative  explanation 
of  the  origin  and  building  up  of  the  forms  of  English  spoken 
in  Ireland. 

Dealing  with  the  sources  of  "  Anglo-Irish  dialect,"  he 
shows  that  the  influences  of  Irish  pronunciation,  vocabulary 
and  idiom,  and  of  Elizabethan  English  and  of  Lowland 
Scotch,  have  largely  affected  that  form  of  speech.  Accord- 
ing to  him,  the  Irish  language  has  determined  the  popular, 


14  IRISH    LITERARY   AND   MUSICAL   STUDIES 

though  not  the  educated,  pronunciation  of  the  English 
letters  "  t,"  "  d,"  "  s,"  and  "  z,"  in  imitation  of  their  Irish 
sounds  as  in  "  butther  "  (butter),  "  thrue  "  (true),  "fisht" 
(fist),  "drizzhling"  (drizzling).  Irish  Gaelic  has  also  intro- 
duced into  Anglo-English  many  single  words,  some  of  which 
— such  as  "  shamrock,"  "  whisky,"  "  bother,"  "  blarney," 
"  galore,"  and  even  "  smithereens " — are  now  current 
wherever  English  is  spoken. 

But  more  interesting  to  the  linguist,  and  to  those  who 
wish  to  write  correct  Hiberno-English,  is  Dr.  Joyce's 
chapter  on  the  idioms  from  the  Irish  language  imported 
into  Anglo-Irish  speech.  These  peculiarities  may  be  classi- 
fied as  prepositional,  pronominal,  adverbial,  verbal  and 
general.  Of  the  prepositional  peculiarities,  the  following 
examples  will  suffice  : — "  There  is  snow  in  it"  is  used  for 
"  There  is  snow  there,"  the  Gaelic  preposition  ann  denoting 
"in  existence."  "The  tinker  took  fourpence  out  of  the 
kettle," — i.e.,  he  earned  fourpence  by  mending  it.  "  I  once 
heard  a  grandmother,"  writes  Dr.  Joyce,  "  an  educated 
Dublin  lady,  say,  in  a  charmingly  pretty  way,  to  her  little 
grandchild  who  came  up  crying  :  '  What  did  they  do  to  you 
on  me  (to  my  harm)?  Did  they  beat  you  on  meT"  This 
is  just  the  sense  of  the  Irish  preposition  air  (on)  before  a 
personal  pronoun  or  personal  name  after  an  active  verb. 

The  reflexive  pronouns  "myself,"  "himself,"  etc.,  have 
meanings  borrowed  from  the  Irish  to  be  found  in  such 
phrases  as  "  The  birds  are  singing  for  themselves,"  "  I  felt 
dead  (dull)  in  myself."  The  personal  pronoun  has  a  curious 
use  in  Irish-English  which  comes  straight  from  the  Gaelic, 
as,  for  example,  "  I  saw  Thomas  and  he  sitting  by  the  fire." 
Hence  Charles  Wolfe,  an  Irishman,  in  his  "  Burial  of  Sir 
John  Moore  "  writes  : 

We  thought,  as  we  hollowed  his  narrow  bed, 

And  smoothed  down  his  lonely  pillow, 
That  the  foe  and  the  stranger  would  tread  on  his  head, 

And  -we  far  away  on  the  billow. 


THE   ENGLISH    SPOKEN    IN    IRELAND  15 

The  following  are  instances  of  adverbial  peculiarities  in 
Hiberno-English :  The  Irish  Is  amhlaidh  (it  is  the  way), 
meaning  "  thus  "  or  "  how  "  or  "  in  order  that,"  is  responsible 
for  such  expressions  as  these  :  "  What  do  you  want,  James  ?  " 
"  'Tis  the  way,  ma'am,  my  mother  sent  me  for  the  loan  of  the 
shovel."  "  I  brought  an  umbrella  the  way  I  wouldn't  get 
wet."  In  colloquial  Irish  the  words  "  even  "  and  "  itself  " 
are  expressed  by  fern,  but  the  Anglo-Irish  avoid  the  word 
"even"  and  incorrectly  use  "itself"  in  its  place, — i.e.,  "If 
I  had  that  much  itself"  meaning  "  If  I  had  even  that  much." 
The  English  "  when  "  is  expressed  in  Gaelic  by  an  nair,  the 
hour  or  the  time  ;  hence  "  The  time  you  arrived  I  was  away 
in  town." 

Verbal  peculiarities  from  the  Irish  are  the  use  of  the 
narrative  infinitive,  a  construction  common  to  the  old  Irish 
annals,  and  still  fast-rooted  in  Irish  folk  speech, — e.g.,  "  How 
did  the  mare  get  that  hurt  ?  "  "  Oh  !  Tom  Cody  to  leap  her 
over  the  garden  wall,  and  she  to  fall  on  her  knees  on  the 
stones."  The  Irish  Gaelic  is  without  the  perfect  and 
pluperfect  tenses,  and  the  Irish  people  do  not  know  how 
or  do  not  care  to  use  them  in  their  English,  but  feeling 
their  need  of  them  supply  it  by  a  periphrasis.  Thus  when 
we  should  say,  "  I  have  finished  my  work,"  they  say,  "  I  am 
after  finishing  my  work,"  which  is  a  direct  translation  from 
the  Irish.  Or  they  wrongly  use  the  preterite — i.e.,  "  I  done 
my  work  " — or  they  incorrectly  resort  to  the  present  pro- 
gressive— i.e.,  "  I  am  sitting  "  (for  "  I  have  been  sitting  ") 
"  waiting  for  you  for  the  last  hour." 

"  Corresponding  devices,"  writes  Dr.  Joyce,  "  are  re- 
sorted to  in  order  to  escape  the  use  of  the  pluperfect,  such 
as,  '  An  hour  before  you  came  yesterday  I  finished '  (for  '  I 
had  finished ')  '  my  work.' "  The  Irish  language  has  a 
consuetudinal  tense  which  the  Irish  people  so  much  miss 
from  the  English  tongue  that  they  have  manufactured  one 
by  the  use  of  the  verbs  "  do  "  and  "  be," — i.e.,  "  There  does 
be  a  meeting  of  the  Company  every  Tuesday,"  that  is  to  say, 


1 6  IRISH    LITERARY   AND    MUSICAL   STUDIES 

the  meeting  is  held  regularly  on  that  day.  Sometimes 
"  be  "  is  used  alone, — e.g.,  "  My  father  bees  at  home  in  the 
morning,"  i.e.,  is  regularly  at  home. 

The  following  sentences  strung  together  in  the  narrative 
form  from  Dr.  Joyce's  pages  will  show  how  Irish  idioms 
abound  in  the  English  spoken  in  Ireland  : 

That  was  well  and  good,  but  the  lion  let  such  a  roar  out  of  him  that 
she  had  like  to  be  killed  with  the  fright,  and  she  was  no  fool  of  a  girl 
neither ;  when  up  comes  along  Dicky  Diver,  the  boy  she  was  to  be 
married  on,  with  his  regulation  rifle  and  it  wasn't  long  after  that  the 
lion  got  death  from  him.  And  if  they  didn't  live  happy  ever  after,  that 
we  may ! 

The  day  was  rising  (clearing)  when  I  called  in  on  the  Murphys.  "  Is 
himself  within  ?  "  I  axed  the  servant  girl.  "  He  is  so  and  herself  too  !•" 
says  she.  With  that  I  went  in  through  the  half-door.  The  woman 
had  a  nose  on  her  (was  looking  sour)  and  neither  of  the  two  axed  me 
had  I  a  mouth  on  me  (would  I  like  some  refreshment).  Then  I  drew 
down  with  them  (introduced  the  subject)  about  the  money. 

Dr.  Joyce  thus  accounts  for  the  Irish  and  Scotch  use  of 
"  will  "  and  "  shall "  as  a  survival  from  Elizabethan  times. 
Hamlet  says  : — "  I  will  win  for  him  an  I  can  ;  if  not,  I  will 
gain  nothing  but  my  shame  and  the  odd  bits."  The  second 
"  will "  exactly  corresponds  with  the  Irish  and  Scotch  use. 
So  also  as  regards  "  shall."  Its  old  and  correct  use,  which 
indicated  obligation,  has  been  discarded  in  England  since 
Shakespeare  made  Macbeth,  on  being  requested  by  his  wife 
to  "  Be  bright  and  jovial  among  your  guests  to-night ! "  reply 
to  her :  "  So  shall  I,  love  ! "  But  this  use  of  the  "  shall  " 
is  preserved  in  Ireland,  for  if  you  ask  an  attentive  Irish 
"  boots  "  to  call  you  early,  he  replies  :  "  I  shall,  Sir."  On 
the  other  hand,  Punch's  Irish  waiter's  use  of  "  will,"  as  he 
stands  with  his  hand  on  a  dish-cover  inquiring  :  "  Will  I 
strip,  ma'am  ?  "  appears,  like  Topsy,  to  have  "  growed  "  of 
itself,  and  is  therefore  incorrect  English.  Dr.  Joyce  has 
not  accounted  for  the  equally  common  Irish  confusion  of 
"  would  "  and  "  should,"  and  it  is  to  be  hoped  that  he  will  do 
so  in  a  second  edition  of  his  book,  which  should  be  assured. 


THE   ENGLISH   SPOKEN    IN    IRELAND  17 

Dr.  Joyce  points  out  that  the  correct  English  sound  of 
the  diphthongs  ea  and  eiy  and  of  long  e,  was  the  same  as 
long  a  in  "  fate  "  from  Elizabethan  to  comparatively  recent 
times.  Thus  Cowper  rhymes  "  sea "  with  "  way " ;  Tate 
and  Brady  rhyme  "conceive"  with  "grave";  while  Pope 
rhymes  "race"  with  "  Lucrece"  and  "  sphere"  with  "  fair." 
On  the  other  hand,  the  correct  old  English  pronunciation  of 
ie  and  ee  has  not  changed  in  Ireland  ;  therefore  Irish  people 
never  say  praste  for  priest,  belave  for  believe,  indade  for 
indeed,  or  kape  for  keep,  as  writers  of  shoddy  Anglo-Irish 
think  they  do. 

"Vocabulary  and  Index"  is  a  somewhat  misleading 
heading  to  Dr.  Joyce's  twelfth  chapter,  which  certainly 
contains  a  fairly  full  vocabulary,  but  is  in  no  sense  an  index 
to  the  text  of  the  preceding  chapters,  though  such  an  index 
was  to  be  looked  for  in  a  book  of  this  kind. 

There  is  no  Irish  Dialect  Society  to  contest  Dr.  Joyce's 
use  of  the  term  "  Anglo-Irish  dialect "  as  a  general  descrip- 
tion of  the  English  spoken  in  Ireland.  But  doubtless  the 
representative  scholars  of  the  Irish-speaking  provinces  would 
hold  that  each  of  them  has  impressed  a  dialect  of  its  own 
upon  the  English  spoken  within  its  borders. 

Then  the  Anglo-Irish  of  much  of  County  Wexford  was 
undoubtedly  of  West  Saxon  origin,  and  we  imagine  that  Sir 
John  Byers  has  something  to  say  for  the  existence  of  more 
than  one  Scoto-Irish  dialect  in  Ulster,  as  doubtless  would 
Mr.  Henry  Hart  and  Mr.  W.  J.  Craig,  the  Shakespearean 
scholars,  had  they  lived  to  produce  their  important  glossary 
of  North  of  Ireland  words. 

The  curious  resemblance  of  many  English  proverbs, 
folk-sayings,  and  primitive  forms  of  expression  to  Anglo- 
Irish  examples  drawn  from  the  Gaelic  raises  the  interesting 
questions  whether  some  of  these  may  not  date  back  to 
days  when  British-Celtic  must  have  considerably  affected 
Anglo-Saxon  speech.  These  proverbs,  sayings,  and  idioms 
may,  indeed,  go  back  to  a  time  when  a  Celtic  speech, 

c 


1 8  IRISH    LITERARY   AND    MUSICAL   STUDIES 

cognate  to  the  Irish,  pervaded  England.  That  it  died  hard 
in  this  country  is  now  beginning  to  be  conceded.  For,  quite 
apart  from  the  obvious  influence  of  the  Cumbrian,  Cambrian, 
and  Cornish  Celtic  dialects  upon  the  English  North-Western, 
Border,  and  South-Western  counties,  it  is  now  held  by  some 
that  British  speech  lingered  on  in  the  North  York  moors 
till  after  the  Norman  Conquest,  whilst  so  far  East  as  Lin- 
colnshire we  find  in  the  shepherds'  tallies  traces  of  a  Celtic 
language. 

We  should  like  to  have  followed  Dr.  Joyce  through  the 
chapters  in  which  he  illustrates  the  ingeniitm  perfervidum 
Scotorum  by  such  comparisons  as  "  My  stomach  is  as  dry 
as  a  lime-burner's  wig,"  and  such  proverbs  as  "  If  you  give 
away  an  old  coat,  don't  cut  off  the  buttons  "  ;  or  dwell  upon 
his  disquisition  on  the  Irish  methods  of  "  dodging  a  curse," 
as  exemplified  in  the  well-known  expression,  "The  dear 
knows,"  or  more  correctly,  "The  deer  knows"  (Thauss  ag 
fee],  by  which  Thauss  ag  Dhee  (God  knows)  is  avoided  ;  or 
quote  some  of  the  delicious  anecdotes  with  which  his  pages 
abound.  But  space  forbids,  and  we  conclude  by  warmly 
recommending  his  book  to  all  would-be  writers  and  tellers 
of  Irish  stories  as  by  far  the  most  authoritative  guide  to  the 
English  spoken  in  Ireland  that  has  yet  appeared. 


JAMES   CLARENCE   MANGAN 

THE  growing  cult  of  James  Mangan,  or  James  Clarence 
Mangan,  as  he  renamed  himself,  who  died  sixty-seven  years 
ago  in  Dublin',  has  been  recently  marked  not  only  by  a 
sympathetic  "  Study  "  of  Mangan  by  Louise  Imogene  Guiney, 
the  American  poetess,  prefacing  an  admirable  selection  from 
his  poems,  but  also  by  Mr.  D.  J.  O'Donoghue's  complete 
edition  of  his  poems  and  very  detailed  biography.  The 
reasons  for  the  slow  recognition  he  has  received  in  this 
country  are  not  far  to  seek.  He  wrote  in  Ireland,  and 
entirely  for  Irish  periodicals.  His  poems  were  never  col- 
lected during  his  lifetime,  and  ill-collected  at  his  death. 
Again,  while  he  was  regarded  as  a  writer  of  genius  by  the 
few  Dublin  contemporaries  to  whom  his  authorship  of 
poems,  very  variously  subscribed,  was  familiar,  even  the 
Irish  public,  owing  to  his  natural  modesty  and  his  solitary 
habits,  knew  practically  nothing  of  him. 

But  his  work  was  too  good  to  remain  buried  in  old 
magazines ;  indeed,  the  best  of  it  is,  by  its  rich  colouring 
and  weird  melody,  even  more  calculated  to  delight  our 
times  than  his  own. 

Mangan  did  not  find  life  worth  living.  "  You  shall 
tramp  the  earth  in  vain  for  a  more  pitiable  object  than  a 
man  of  genius  with  nothing  to  back  it,"  he  himself  writes, 
doubtless  thinking  of  his  own  case.  For  the  possession  of 
extraordinary  gifts  amid  such  wretched  surroundings  as  he 
had  to  face  called  for  a  stubborn  heroism  of  which  his 
gentle,  sensitive  nature  was  incapable,  and  he  went  down, 
though  not  without  a  struggle,  leaving  us  a  legacy  of 


20  IRISH    LITERARY   AND    MUSICAL   STUDIES 

passionate,  poetic  melancholy,  here  and  there,  however, 
shot  through  by  gleams  of  wit  and  humour  which  mark  him  for 
a  true  Irishman,  and  of  which  the  following  is  a  fair  example  : 

A  FAST  KEEPER 

My  friend,  Tom  Bentley,  borrowed  from  me  lately 

A  score  of  yellow  shiners.     Subsequently 

I  met  the  cove,  and  dunned  him  rather  gently  ; 
Immediately  he  stood  extremely  stately, 
And  swore,  "'pon  honour,"  that  he  "  wondered  greatly." 

We  parted  coolly.     Well  (exclaimed  I  ment'lly), 

I  calculate  this  isn't  acting  straightly ; 
You're  what  slangwhangers  call  a  scamp,  Tom  Bentley. 

In  sooth,  I  thought  his  impudence  prodigious  ; 

And  so  I  told  Jack  Spratt  a  few  days  after  ; 

But  Jack  burst  into  such  a  fit  of  laughter. 
"  Fact  is"  (said  he'),  "  poor  Tom  has  turned  religious." 

I  stared,  and  asked  him  what  it  was  he  meant. 

"  Why,  don't  you  see,"  quoth  Jack,  "  he  keeps  the  Lent  f  " 

The  eldest  son  of  a  Dublin  grocer,  James  Mangan  was 
born,  in  the  year  1802,  into  the  same  circumstances  under 
which  Thomas  Moore  had  seen  the  light  in  the  very  same 
locality  four-and-twenty  years  before. 

Like  Moore,  moreover,  he  was  destined  to  write  Irish 
national  lyrics  of  great  beauty  and  Oriental  poems  of  a  very 
striking  character,  though  in  each  instance  the  quality  of 
Mangan's  verse  differs  absolutely  from  Moore's.  One  more 
parallel.  He  possessed  a  vein  of  whimsicality  as  delicate  as 
Moore's,  which,  had  he  worked  it  judiciously,  would  have 
given  him  as  high  a  reputation  as  a  poetical  satirist. 

But  here  all  likeness  between  the  two  poets  ceases. 
Moore  had  a  happy  home  in  childhood,  Mangan  a  most 
unhappy  one.  Though  crediting  his  father  with  some  fine 
traits  of  character,  Mangan  writes  that,  unlike  Moore's, 
"  he  never  exhibited  the  qualities  of  guardian  towards  his 
children,"  whom  he  treated  habitually  as  a  huntsman  would 
treat  refractory  hounds.  It  was  his  boast,  uttered  in  pure 


JAMES   CLARENCE   MANGAN  21 

glee  of  heart,  "that  we  would  run  into  a  mousehole  to 
shun  him."  But  with  "this  rigorous  conception  of  the 
awe  and  respect  due  to  him  as  head  of  the  family,"  as 
Mr.  O'Donoghue  puts  it,  he  combined  a  wrong-headed 
generosity  and  credulity  which  gradually  dissipated  his 
respectable  fortune  in  foolish  loans  and  silly  speculations 
and  in  the  end  reduced  him  to  absolute  ruin.  Thus  it  came 
about  that  at  the  age  of  fifteen,  when  James  Mangan's  great 
promise  as  a  schoolboy  should  have  been  inducing  his 
father  to  give  him  those  continued  educational  advantages 
which  lifted  young  Moore  to  honour  and  affluence,  Mangan 
was  helping  to  support  his  broken-down  parents  by 
monotonous  drudgery  at  a  scrivener's  desk,  in  rude  and 
unsympathetic  company. 

For  his  mother's  sake  he  went  through  with  the  un- 
palatable duty.  But  he  deeply  resented  his  father's  action 
in  the  matter.  Indeed,  the  very  recollection  of  it  in  after-years 
threw  him  into  a  paroxysm  of  self-pity.  Yet  it  must  be 
confessed  that  when  in  this  condition  Mangan  had  a  way  of 
making  his  strong  imagination  take  the  place  of  his  weak 
memory,  or  of  describing  things  not  as  they  happened,  but 
as  they  should  have  happened  in  his  morbid  opinion.  He 
therefore  exaggerates  his  hours  of  work  and  the  chaff  of  his 
fellow-clerks,  in  what  Mr.  O'Donoghue  proves  was  a  highly 
respectable  office,  into  an  appalling  record  of  white  slavery 
amongst  a  herd  of  obscene  savages. 

Is  Mangan  hysterically  playing  upon  our  feelings  of  pity 
and  his  own  sense  of  self-importance  ?  Or  is  he  dealing  with 
matters  of  fact  on  the  non-moral,  if  artistic,  principle  which 
he  thus  enunciates  when  treating  of  matters  of  opinion  in  a 
sketch  of  Dr.  Petrie,  the  famous  Irish  archasologist  ? 

I  take  a  few  facts,  not  caring  to  be  overwhelmed  by  too  many  proofs 
that  they  are  facts ;  with  them  I  mix  up  a  dish  of  the  marvellous— 
perhaps  an  old  wife's  tale— perhaps  a  half-remembered  dream  or 
mesmeric  experience  of  my  own— and  the  business  is  done.  My 
conclusion  is  reached  and  shelved,  and  must  not  thenceforward  be 


22  IRISH   LITERARY   AND   MUSICAL   STUDIES 

disturbed.  I  would  as  soon  think  at  any  time  afterwards  of  questioning 
its  truth  as  of  doubting  the  veritable  existence  of  the  Barber  s  five 
brothers  in  The  Arabian  Nights  or  the  power  of  Keyn  Alasnam King 
of  the  Genii.  There  it  is,  and  an  opponent  may  battle  with  me 
anent  it,  if  he  pleases.  I  manage  to  hold  my  ground  by  the  help  ot 
digressions  and  analogies. 

Till  his  eight-and-twentieth  year  Mangan  did  clerical 
work  by  day,  and  studied  and  rambled  and  rhapsodised 
alone  by  night,  building  up  his  education  in  desultory 
fashion  on  the  good  foundation  of  Latin  and  modern 
languages  laid  for  him  during  his  school-days  by  Father 
Graham,  a  very  learned  scholar  of  the  best  continental 

training. 

He  read  much  English  literature,  and  enjoyed  declairr 
ing  aloud  from  Shakespeare  and  Byron  ;  but  the  dreamy 
philosophy  and  romance  of  the  German  poets  attracted  him 
most,  and  he  threw  himself  deeply  into  their  study.  He 
was  also  an  eager  reader  of  mediaeval  works  of  magic  and 
mystery.  And  so,  a  slender,  picturesque  figure,  with  deep 
blue  eyes,  golden  hair,  and  fine  but  strangely  pallid  features, 
he  haunted  the  bookshops  and  bookstalls,  turning  over  the 
pages  of  old  black-letter,  in  search  of  the  mystical  and 
marvellous. 

He  looked— he  could  not  help  looking— a  characte 
and  having  discovered  the  fact,  he  apparently  amused  him- 
self by  playing  the  part. 

In  1 8 1 8— that  is  to  say,  when  he  was  sixteen  years  of 
age— Mangan's  verse  began  to  appear  in  the  poets'  corners 
of  the  Dublin  and  Belfast  almanacks,  in  the  shape  of 
charades,  acrostics,  arid  rebuses,  at  that  time  greatly  in 
fashion;  and  till  1826  he  was  a  frequent  and  popular 
contributor  to  these  annuals. 

Under  countless  pseudonyms  he  thus  indulged  his  love 
of  mystery  and  enigma,  and  gratified  his  taste  for  literary 
sleight  of  art  by  outrhyming  all  his  rivals  in  original  metres 
of  the  most  complicated  kind,  as  Mr.  O'Donoghue  points 


JAMES   CLARENCE   MANGAN  23 

out.  The  faculty  for  alliteration  and  rhyme,  for  pause  and 
cadence  thus  developed,  on  the  whole  affected  his  after- 
work  for  good;  though  we  must  also  attribute  to  the 
almanack  influence,  as  suggested  by  Mr.  O'Donoghue,  the 
forced  double  rhymes  and  the  forced  gaiety  that  occasionally 
vitiate  it. 

After  a  twelvemonth  of  deep  religious  depression,  from 
which  his  spiritual  advisers  rescued  him  by  judiciously 
prescribing  his  resort  to  "cheerful  and  gay  society," 
Mangan,  who  had  been  reading  much  but  writing  little, 
became  a  leading  poetical  contributor  to  The  Comet,  a  very 
cleverly  but  bitterly  written  "  anti-tithe  "  weekly. 

The  conductors  of  The  Comet  were  Philistines,  and  had 
little  sympathy  with  Mangan's  higher  flights  ;  though  he  had 
the  courage  to  press  upon  them  poems  of  such  promise  as 
"  The  Dying  Enthusiast "  and  "  Life  is  the  Desert  and  the 
Solitude,"  and  so  specimens  of  his  whimsical  prose  and 
verse  figure  most  frequently  in  that  journal. 

John  Sheehan,  its  editor,  and  his  cronies  treated  Mangan 
to  a  full  share  of  the  coarse  chaff  which  they  mistook  for 
wit,  ridiculing  him  for  his  peculiarities,  voting  him  "  a  spoon  " 
because  he  did  not  or  could  not  retort  in  the  same  vein,  and 
finally  insulting  him  into  a  severance  of  his  connection  with 
The  Comet,  before  its  final  collapse  under  a  Government 
prosecution. 

But  the  establishment  of  The  Dublin  Penny  Journal 'gave 
him  a  better  literary  connection,  which  he  continued  to 
extend  until  he  had  established  himself  as  a  regular  con- 
tributor to  The  Dublin  University  Magazine,  then  under 
Charles  Lever's  editorship. 

The  vogue  for  German  literature,  largely  attributable  to 
Carlyle's  influence,  made  good  translations  from  the  German 
poets  peculiarly  acceptable  about  this  time ;  and  this  special 
need  was  Mangan's  opportunity  as  a  sympathetic  student  of 
these  authors,  and  now  a  considerable  master  of  verse.  He 
availed  himself  of  it  fully,  and  at  first  quite  seriously.  He 


24  IRISH    LITERARY   AND    MUSICAL   STUDIES 

evidently  took  infinite  pains  to  reproduce  the  spirit  of  each 
original  with  which  he  dealt.  In  the  rare  instances  where 
the  character  of  the  original  lent  itself  to  almost  literal 
translation  into  English  he  so  rendered  it  with  superlative 
skill,  if  anything  out  Schillering  Schiller  in  some  of  his 
versions  of  that  poet,  as  Coleridge  may  be  said  to  have  done 
in  part  of  his  Wallenstein.  But  as  a  rule  he  was  an 
adapter  rather  than  a  translator,  "  treating  his  victims  on  the 
same  principle,  though  without  the  same  justification,  as 
Burns  treats  the  floating  Scotch  ballads,"  as  Miss  Guiney 
justly  points  out.  For  "  the  children  of  conventional  art  " 
suffer  more  from  Mangan's  re-dressing  than  the  Scotch 
children  of  Nature  do  from  Burns's  genius  for  readjusting 
and  beautifying.  Take  the  following  from  the  German  of 
Otto  Runge  as  an  instance  of  Mangan's  happiest  manner  as 
a  translator  : 

HOLINESS  TO  THE  LORD. 

There  blooms  a  beautiful  Flower,  it  blooms  in  a  far-off  land  ; 

Its  life  has  a  mystic  meaning  for  few  to  understand  ; 

Its  leaves  illumine  the  valley,  its  odour  scents  the  wood  ; 

And  if  evil  men  come  near  it,  they  grow  for  the  moment  good. 

When  the  winds  are  tranced  in  slumber,  the  rays  of  this  luminous 
Flower 

Shed  glory  more  than  earthly  o'er  lake  and  hill  and  bower ; 

The  hut,  the  hall,  the  palace,  yea,  earth's  forsakenest  sod, 

Shine  out  in  the  wondrous  lustre  that  fills  the  heaven  of  God. 

Three  Kings  came  once  to  a  hostel  wherein  lay  the  Flower  so  rare, 

A  star  shone  over  its  roof,  and  they  knelt  adoring  there  ; 

Whenever  thou  seest  a  damsel  whose  young  eyes  dazzle  and  win, 

O,  pray  that  her  heart  may  cherish  this  Jt  lower  of  Flowers  within  I 

The  original  German  poem  is  too  vague  to  be  really 
effective ;  yet,  while  scarcely  altering  a  word  in  his  translation, 
Mangan  has  by  a  suggestive  title  and  an  almost  imper- 
ceptible touch  here  and  there  given  it  a  perfect  meaning. 
Surely,  too,  Mr.  O'Donoghue  is  right  in  saying  that  Mangan's 
version  of  Eichendorff's  miller's  daughter  is  much  superior 
to  the  better  known  English  translation  of  it. 


JAMES    CLARENCE    MANGAN  2$ 

A  tendency  thus  to  edit  and  improve  his  originals, 
notably  in  the  case  of  minor  German  poets,  gradually  grew 
upon  him.  Having  become  an  acute  critic  of  their  weak- 
nesses, and  having  readers  to  cater  for  who  would  have 
been  intolerant  of  their  occasional  lapses  into  dulness  and 
sentimentality,  Mangan  now  began  to  embroider  them  with 
a  free  hand.  This  is  his  droll  comment  on  the  situation  : 

Most  to  be  commiserated  of  all  is  his  (the  German  poet's)  English 
translator,  who,  having  the  severest  judges  in  Europe  for  his  critics,  is 
often  reduced  to  the  necessity  of  either  making  himself  ridiculous  by 
his  desperate  fidelity,  or  criminal  by  his  departures  from  it,  however 
marvellously  these  may  improve  the  original.  The  entire  weight  of  the 
blame  rests  upon  the  authors  from  whom  we  versify.  We  cannot,  like 
the  experimentalist  in  "Gulliver,"  undertake  to  extract  a  greater 
number  of  sunbeams  from  a  cucumber  than  it  is  in  the  habit  of 
yielding.  ...  It  is  our  business  to  cast  a  veil  over  the  German  poet's 
blemishes,  and  bring  forward  nothing  but  his  excellences,  or  what  we 
presume  to  be  such. 

Of  course  this  is  sheer  paradox,  but  it  veiled  this  very 
pertinent  position :  Translations  from  the  German  are 
my  bread-and-butter.  If  I  cannot  make  them  interesting, 
I  must  do  without  bread-and-butter.  I  can  only  make 
them  interesting  by  improving  them  or  improving  them 
away.  This  process  sustains  and  amuses  me,  so  I  shall 
continue  it. 

Of  the  German  poet  in  general  he  remarks  :  "  He  begins 
in  a  tone  of  thunder,  as  if  he  would  bring  heaven  and  earth 
into  collision,  but  while  you  are  waiting  to  see  what  will 
come  of  it,  he  calls  for  his  pipe,  and  you  thenceforth  lose 
him  in  the  fog."  And  Ludwig  Tieck,  "  man-milliner  to  the 
Muses,"  is  thus  delicately  touched  off  in  particular  :  "  He 
simpers  and  whimpers,  and  yet  one  cannot  tell  whether  he 
would  be  thought  glad  or  sad.  He  plays  the  poetical 
coquette  between  Fortune  and  Misfortune.  .  .  .  He  is 
knocked  down  by  a  bulrush  every  half-minute  in  the  day, 
and  reverently  kisses  the  face  of  his  Fatherland  fourteen 
hundred  and  forty  times  in  twelve  hours." 


26  IRISH    LITERARY   AND    MUSICAL   STUDIES 

Thus  he  improved  and  improved  German  minor  poets 
as  his  stock  for  translation  deteriorated,  until  he  improved 
them  almost  entirely  away,  and  finally  began  to  publish,  as 
poems  from  the  German  of  "  Dreschler  "  and  "  Selber,"  and 
other  non-existent  authors,  lyrics  of  his  own,  more  or  less 
influenced  by  his  German  studies. 

This  practice  he  carried  on  with  even  greater  effrontery 
when  he  began  to  put  forth  so-called  translations  of  Oriental 
poetry.  Indeed,  it  seems  to  puzzle  Mangan's  researchful 
biographer,  Mr.  O'Donoghue,  where  his  Litera  Orientates 
are  original  and  where  reflected  from  an  Eastern  source, 
or  refracted  through  a  German  medium.  Mangan  slily 
attributes  this  explanation  of  his  own  altruistic  attitude  on 
the  whole  question  to  Edward  Walsh  : 

My  poor  friend  Clarence  has  perpetrated  a  great  number  of 
literary  sins,  which,  taken  together,  would  appear  "  the  antithesis  of 
plagiarism."  It  is  a  strange  fault,  no  doubt,  and  one  that  I  cannot 
understand,  that  Mangan  should  entertain  a  deep  diffidence  of  his  own 
incapacity  to  amuse  or  attract  others  to  anything  emanating  from  him- 
self. .  .  .  People  have  called  him  a  singular  man,  but  he  is  rather  a 
plural  one — a  Proteus.  .  .  .  He  has  been  much  addicted  to  the  practice 
of  fathering  upon  other  writers  the  offspring  of  his  own  brain.  ...  I 
cannot  commend  it.  A  man  may  have  a  right  to  offer  his  property  to 
others,  but  nothing  can  justify  his  forcing  it  upon  them. 

When  remonstrated  with  by  Dr.  Anster  for  thus  depriving 
himself  of  the  credit  of  such  fine  original  work  as  was 
contained  in  a  sham  translation  of  Hafiz,  he  replied,  "Any 
one  could  see  that  it  was  only  Half-his." 

But  whatever  their  origin,  there  is  no  doubt  of  the  rare 
poetical  quality  of  much  of  Mangan's  so-called  Eastern 
poems.  Let  the  following  serve  for  an  example  : 

THE  KARAMANIAN  EXILE. 

I  see  thee  ever  in  my  dreams, 
Karaman  ! 

Thy  hundred  hills,  thy  thousand  streams, 
Karaman,  O  Karaman  ! 


JAMES   CLARENCE   MANGAN  2J 

As  when  thy  gold-bright  morning  gleams, 

As  when  the  deepening  sunset  seams 

With  lines  of  light  thy  hills  and  streams, 

Karaman  ! 

So  thou  loomest  on  my  dreams, 

Karaman  ! 

On  all  my  dreams,  my  homesick  dreams, 

Karaman,  O  Karaman ! 

The  hot  bright  plains,  the  sun,  the  skies, 

Karaman, 

Seem  death-black  marble  in  mine  eyes, 

Karaman,  O  Karaman  ! 

I  turn  from  summer's  blooms  and  dyes, 

Yet  in  my  dreams  thou  dost  arise 

In  welcome  glory  to  mine  eyes, 

Karaman  ! 

In  thee  my  life  of  life  yet  lies, 

Karaman  ! 

Thou  still  art  holy  in  mine  eyes, 

Karaman,  O  Karaman  ! 

Mangan  had  meanwhile  got  fresh  employment  as  a 
clerk,  first  in  various  Dublin  attorneys'  offices,  and  then 
under  the  Irish  Ordnance  Survey ;  but  when  that  depart- 
ment was  for  the  time  being  closed,  he  practically  supported 
himself  by  his  pen.  In  this  latter  office,  like  Charles  Lamb, 
in  whose  "  dry  drollery "  he  took  a  congenial  delight,  he 
was  a  late-comer  if  not  an  early-goer,  varying  in  his  moods 
between  long  spells  of  dejected  silence  and  brief  outbursts 
of  what  Mitchell  well  describes  as  "  fictitious  jollity."  For 
although  then  more  comfortably  off  than  he  had  ever 
been,  and  in  the  midst  of  considerate  friends,  his  will  was 
becoming  gradually  weakened  by  some  form  of  stimulant, 
to  which  he  declares  his  wretched  health  and  slavish  work 
had  first  driven  him.  Was  this  stimulant  opium,  or  "  red 
rum,"  or  both  ? 

Mr.  O'Donoghue  maintains  that  he  had  shaken  off  the 
habit  of  opium-eating,  contracted  when  he  was  at  the 
scrivener's  office,  only  to  fall  a  victim  to  drink. 


28  IRISH   LITERARY   AND   MUSICAL   STUDIES 

Dr.  Sigerson  and  other  medical  experts  declare  that  the 
evidence  derived  from  his  handwriting,  which  remained 
quite  steady  until  the  last,  proves  him  never  to  have  become 
an  actual  drunkard.  And  Miss  Guiney  holds  that  "this 
singular  misconception  is  due  to  his  own  denial  of  his  real 
folly,"  opium-eating,  of  which  "  secretiveness  is  the  sign- 
manual,"  and  the  indulgence  in  which  would  account  for 
the  unmistakable  alabaster  shine  upon  his  features,  his 
fixed  eyes,  his  incoherent  life,  and,  above  all,  his  strangely 
coloured  and  visionary  poems,  and  such  dreams  as  he  here 
describes  :  "  The  Gorgon's  head,  the  triple-faced  hell-dog, 
the  handwriting  on  Belshazzar's  palace  wall,  the  fire  globe 
that  turned  below  the  feet  of  Pascal,  are  all  bagatelles 
beside  the  phantasmagoria  which  evermore  haunt  my  brain 
and  blast  my  eyes." 

Some  of  his  most  characteristically  ecstatic  poems  were 
written  at  the  very  close  of  his  career,  which  would  indicate 
that  opium,  not  alcohol,  was  still  his  master,  in  spite  of 
Father  Meehan's  evidence. 

Take  this  passage  from  A  Vision  of  Connaught  in  the 
Thirteenth  Century^  and  compare  it  with  Coleridge's 
Kubla  Khan,  and  the  internal  evidence  in  favour  of  a  still 
prevailing  opium  influence  will  be  hard  to  gainsay : 

Then  saw  I  thrones, 

And  circling  fires, 

And  a  dome  rose  near  me,  as  by  a  spell, 

Whence  flowed  the  tones 

Of  silver  lyres, 

And  many  voices  in  wreathed  swell  ; 

And  their  thrilling  chime 

Fell  on  my  ears 

As  the  heavenly  hymn  of  an  angel-band  ; 

"It  is  now  the  time, 

These  be  the  years, 

Of  Cuhal  Mor  of  the  Wine-red  Hand  !  'r 

It  has  been  suggested  that  disappointment  in  love,  as 
much  as  his  ill-health  and  unhappy  youth,  turned  Mangan 


JAMES   CLARENCE   MANGAN  29 

into  an  opium-eater.  The  evidence,  however,  goes  strongly 
against  this  theory.  He  fell  into  a  splenetic  mood  after 
Miss  Margaret  Stacpoole  discouraged  his  attentions,  and 
railed  at  her  as  "  Caroline."  But  he  got  over  his  resent- 
ment, and  resumed  acquaintance  with  her  as  a  friend,  as 
Sir  Charles  Gavan  Duffy  distinctly  proves,  and  gave  other 
unmistakable  symptoms  that  the  wound  had  never  been  a 
deep  one.  "  We  must  remember,  moreover,"  with  Miss 
Guiney,  "  that  a  poet's  despair  cannot  gracefully  charge 
itself  to  dearth  of  beef,  unpleasant  kinsfolk,  and  headaches 
out  of  a  morphine  phial.  Hence  woman  and  the  love  of 
woman  come  in  as  the  causa  rerum,  even  in  a  Mangan." 

This  is  his  portrait  at  the  time,  touched  in  from  several 
contemporary  sources : 

Of  middle  height,  he  is  slightly  stooped  and  attenuated  as  one  ot 
Memling's  monks.  .  .  .  His  hair  is  white  as  new-fallen  snow,  which 
gives  him  the  appearance  of  age  before  he  is  old.  His  eye  is 
inexpressibly  deep  and  beautiful,  his  forehead  unwrinkled  and  white. 
Pressed  closely  over  his  brows  is  a  hat  with  such  a  quaint-shaped  crown, 
such  a  high,  wide-boated  leaf  as  has  rarely  been  seen  off  the  stage  ;  his 
little  coat,  tightly  buttoned,  is  covered  with  a  shabby  cloak  that  once 
has  been  blue,  the  tightest  to  the  form  that  can  be  imagined.  He 
moves  seemingly  with  pain— his  last  hour  is  not  far  off.  He  speaks  ! 
You  cannot  choose  but  listen  to  his  low,  touching  voice.  That  man, 
so  weak,  so  miserable,  whom  you  meet  alone  in  life,  seeking  com- 
panionship in  darkness,  is  James  Clarence  Mangan  ! 

Let  us  follow  his  failing  life  to  its  unhappy  close.  That 
he  had  struggled  hard  to  resist  intemperance,  whatever  its 
mastering  form  may  have  been,  is  clear.  Ever  and  again 
he  fought  off  his  temptation,  flying  from  it  to  the  protection 
of  such  good  friends  as  Father  Meehan — from  whom  he 
took  the  pledge  at  last ;  but,  alas  !  only  to  break  it  again. 

But  though  falling  more  repeatedly  in  these  latter  days, 
he  worked  as  hard,  and  indeed  with  a  higher  purpose,  in 
the  lucid  intervals  that  were  left  him. 

During  the  last  few  years  he  had  come  under  the 
spell  of  the  Young  Irelanders,  and  had  contributed  fine 


30  IRISH    LITERARY   AND    MUSICAL   STUDIES 

rhetorical  verse  and  several  noble  laments  to  the  Nation, 
though  he  had  never  personally  identified  himself  with  its 
political  views.  But  he  had  been  stirred  to  the  expression 
of  strong  patriotic  feeling,  and  this  culminates  in  the 
broken  man's  pathetic  offer  of  his  open  services  to  John 
Mitchell  when,  on  the  eve  of  his  revolutionary  movement, 
he  seceded  from  the  Nation  and  founded  the  United 
Irishman,  Mitchell  generously  put  aside,  but  never  forgot, 
this  offer. 

Patriotic  and  devotional  verse  and  a  certain  amount  of 
rough-and-ready  translation  from  the  Irish,  for  the  supply 
of  the  very  necessaries  of  life,  occupied  Mangan's  closing 
days. 

The  Irish  Famine,  whose  horrors  are  reflected  in  his 
New  Year's  Lay,  had  profoundly  affected  his  imagination. 
It  was  followed  by  the  cholera,  and  by  this,  in  the  course 
of  one  of  his  numerous  disappearances  from  all  knowledge 
of  his  friends,  Mangan  was  stricken.  He  recovered,  and 
was  too  soon  allowed  to  leave  one  of  the  temporary  cholera- 
sheds  at  Kilmainham  to  which  he  had  been  removed ;  for 
collapse  followed,  and  he  was  finally  carried  from  a 
wretched  cellar  in  Bride  Street  to  the  Meath  Hospital, 
where  he  died  seven  days  after  admission. 

Hi?,  true  friend,  Father  Meehan,  thus  describes  the 
end: — ''On  taking  a  chair  at  his  bedside  the  poor  fellow 
playfully  said  :  '  I  feel  that  I  am  going ;  I  know  that  I 
must  go,  "  unhousel'd  "  and  "  unaneal'd,"  but  you  must  not 
let  me  go  "  unshriven  "  and  "  unanointed." ' "  "  Poor  fellow ! " 
writes  the  same  good  priest  elsewhere,  "  he  did  occasionally 
take  what  he  ought  not  to  have  taken ;  but  be  his  faults 
what  they  may  have  been,  he  was  a  pure  man,  never 
lowering  himself  to  ordinary  debaucheries  or  sensuality  of 
any  sort.  He  prayed  and  heard  mass  almost  every  day, 
and  occasionally  knelt  at  the  altar-rail." 

In  this  connection  some  of  Mangan's  devotional  verse 
may  fitly  be  quoted  from  Mr.  O'Donoghue's  volume. 


JAMES   CLARENCE   MANGAN  3! 

I  raise  my  thoughts  in  prayer  to  God, 
I  look  for  help  to  Him  alone 
Who  shared  our  lot — 
The  Mighty  One  of  Heaven,  who  trod 

Life's  path  as  Man,  though  earth — His  own — 
Received  Him  not ! 

I  turn  to  Him,  and  ask  for  naught 
Save  knowledge  of  His  heavenly  will, 

Whate'er  it  be  ; 

I  seek  no  doubtful  blessings,  fraught 
With  present  good,  but  final  ill 
And  agony  : 

Come  Death  or  Life,  come  Woe  or  Weal, 
Whate'er  my  God  elects  to  send 

I  here  embrace  ; 

Blest  while,  though  tortured  on  the  wheel, 
I  forfeit  not,  or  worse,  mis-spend 
His  holy  Grace. 

The  fount  of  Happiness — the  source  of  Glory — 
Eternity  is  in  Thy  hands  and  Power — 
Oh  !  from  that  sphere  unrecognised  by  our 

Slow  souls,  look  down  upon  a  world  which,  hoary 
In  evil  and  in  error  though  it  be, 

Retains  even  yet  some  trace  of  that  primeval 

Beauty  that  bloomed  upon  its  brow  ere  Evil 
And  Error  wiled  it  from  Thy  Love  and  Thee  ! 
Look  down,  and  if,  while  human  brows  are  brightening 

In  godless  triumph,  angel  eyes  be  weeping, 
Publish  Thy  will  in  syllables  of  Lightning 

And  sentences  of  Thunder  to  the  Sleeping  ! 
Look  down,  and  renovate  the  waning  name 

Of  Goodness,  and  relume  the  waning  light 
Of  Truth  and  purity  ! — that  all  may  aim 

At  one  imperishable  crown — the  bright 
Guerdon  which  they,  who  by  untired  and  holy 

Exertion  overcome  the  earth,  inherit — 
The  Self-denying,  the  Peaceable,  the  Lowly, 

The  truly  Merciful,  the  Poor  in  Spirit. 

When  his  body  lay  in  the  mortuary  Dr.  William  Stokes 
had  a  cast  taken  of  his  face,  and  Frederick,  afterwards  Sir 


32  IRISH    LITERARY    AND    MUSICAL   STUDIES 

Frederick  Burton,  made  the  remarkable  sketch  of  Mangan 
after  death  which  now  hangs  in  the  Irish  National  Portrait 
Gallery. 

I  had  a  conversation  with  Sir  Frederick  about  this  at 
the  Athenaeum  Club,  when  he  told  me  that  he  had  once 
seen  Mangan  in  life  in  the  company  of  "  dear  old  Petrie." 
Mangan  left  the  room,  and  Burton,  struck  by  his  face,  asked 
"  Who  was  that  ? "  "  Mangan,  the  Poet,"  replied  Petrie. 
He  had  at  that  time,  according  to  Burton,  a  profusion  of 
reddish  hair  tangled  over  his  forehead,  and  his  nose  though 
good  was  blunt.  The  corpse  had  luxuriant  grizzled  hair 
and  a  noble  forehead ;  the  nose  was  a  fine  aquiline.  "  For 
the  rigor  mortis"  explained  Burton,  "  often  draws  the 
skin  over  the  cartilage  and  produces  an  effect  in  death 
that  did  not  exist  in  life."  Thus  poor  Mangan  was 
elusive  to  the  last,  and  we  do  not  possess  his  true  portrait 
after  all. 

What  are  the  poetical  influences  under  which  Mangan 
fell?  What  are  his  poetical  methods?  What  is  his 
distinctive  poetical  note  ?  And  how  far  is  its  predominance 
likely  to  ensure  him  poetic  immortality  ? 

Apart  from  the  German  poets,  he  is  in  his  early  and 
middle  period  most  reminiscent  of  Byron ;  here  and  there 
we  find  in  him  a  Shakespearean  touch ;  and  occasional 
echoes  of  Coleridge,  Keats,  Shelley,  and  Tennyson 
encounter  us  in  his  writings — notably  Coleridge,  whom 
Mangan  further  resembled  in  his  wonderful  faculty  for 
brilliant  monologue ;  testibus  Sir  Charles  Gavan  Duffy  and 
others. 

Mangan,  writes  Mitchell,  would  sometimes  remain  in  conversation 
of  his  own  for  an  hour  ;  for  though  extremely  silent,  shy,  and  reserved 
habitually,  yet,  with  those  in  whom  he  confided,  he  was  much  given 
to  strange  and  desultory  talk,  which  seemed  like  the  soliloquy  of  a 
somnambulist.  His  blue  eyes  would  then  dilate,  and  light  up 
strangely  the  sepulchral  pallor  of  his  face. 

"  Of  his  manner  and  his  conversation,"  writes  O'Daly, 


JAMES    CLARENCE    MANGAN  33 

"  it  would  be  impossible  to  give  a  correct  idea ;  they  may  be 
best  described  by  an  extract  from  his  favourite  Schiller  ; 

His  dreams  were  of  great  objects, 
He  walked  amidst  us  of  a  silent  spirit, 
Communing  with  himself ;  yet  I  have  known  him 
Transported  on  a  sudden  into  utterance 
Of  strange  conceptions  ;  kindling  into  splendour, 
His  soul  revealed  itself,  and  he  spake  so 
That  we  looked  round,  perplexed,  upon  each  other, 
Not  knowing  whether  it  was  craziness, 
Or  whether  it  were  a  god  that  spake  in  him." 

It  has  been  explained  how  by  force  of  circumstances  he 
became  a  translator,  adapter,  improver,  and  improver  away 
of  Continental,  Oriental,  and,  we  should  add,  Irish  poetry. 
To  disentangle  from  his  so-called  translations  what  is 
Mangan's  would,  no  doubt,  be  a  troublesome  task  in  many 
instances,  but  it  should  be  a  highly  interesting  one  to  a 
linguistic  man  of  letters.  Add  to  this  remarkable  peculiarity 
of  method  another.  Stress  of  circumstances — sudden  journ- 
alistic exigencies,  for  example — led  him  to  put  forth  verse 
in  an  unfinished  form.  He,  however,  kept  a  parental  eye 
upon  a  poem  he  valued,  and  he  reproduced  it  from  time  to 
time  in  periodical  after  periodical  with  continually  improv- 
ing finish,  or  recast  it  altogether.  The  most  memorable 
example  of  this  habit  is  his  treatment  of  his  greatest  poem, 
My  Dark  Rosaleen. 

This  is  based  on  an  Irish  ode  by  a  minstrel  of  the 
O'Donnell  clan,  contemporary  with  Shakespeare,  of  which 
the  literal  English  translation  is  given  by  Miss  Guiney  at 
length  in  her  study  of  Mangan,  and  there  contrasted  with 
his  successive  versions  of  it.  Mangan  felt  that  he  had  not 
done  the  theme  justice,  and  worked  at  it  with  true  artistic 
fervour  until  he  wrought  it  into  his  masterpiece;  for,  as 
Miss  Guiney  truly  says,  "  between  My  Dark  Rosaleen 
and  the  preceding  lyrics  made  from  Raisin  Dubh  by  the 
same  hand  is  a  difference — all  the  difference  there  can  be 
between  the  thing  cunningly  wrought  and  the  thing  divinely 


34  IRISH    LITERARY   AND    MUSICAL   STUDIES 

inspired."  But  the  great  body  of  his  verse  Mangan  did  not 
treat  in  this  way.  As  a  consequence  there  is  a  very  great 
variety  of  quality  in  its  very  considerable  quantity. 

When  did  Mangan  acquire  a  distinctive  poetical  note, 
and  what  was  its  peculiar  character  ?  Before  the  year  1840 
he  had  begun  to  experiment  with  "  the  refrain,"  as  he  had 
before  experimented  in  rhythms  that  were  absolutely  novel. 
Some  of  the  best  of  these  refrains  and  rhythms,  which 
contain  a  mystical  music  all  their  own,  occur  in  his  so- 
called  translations.  Edgar  Allan  Poe,  a  fellow-Celt,  is 
generally  credited,  in  the  Itaven,  with  that  modern 
adaptation  of  the  refrain  which  consists  of  repeating  it  with 
musical  variations.  Indeed,  Poe  himself  states  that  this  use 
of  the  refrain  in  that  poem  was  his  first  experiment  of  the 
kind.  Now  the  Raven  was  not  published  till  1845, 
whereas  from  1839  onward  Mangan,  as  Miss  Guiney  points 
out,  "bestowed  upon  almost  everything  he  wrote  the  curious 
involved  diction  in  question."  For  example,  the  Winniger 
IVinehouse,  slightly  improved  from  Hoffman  of  Fallersleben  , 
has  the  refrain : 

As  thinking  but  doubles  men's  troubles, 
Tis  shirked  in  the  emerald  parlour  ; 
Tho'  banks  be  broken  and  war  lour, 
We've  eyes  alone  for  such  bubbles 
As  wink  on  our  cups  in  the  Winehouse, 
Our  golden  cups  in  the  Winehouse 
(As  poets  would  feign),  but  'tis  glasses  we  drain' 
In  the  sanded  Winniger  Winehouse. 

This  art-effect  runs  through  Mangan's  so-called  Oriental 
poems,  and  its  use  in  the  Karamanian  Exile  so  caught 
the  fancy  of  the  author  of  Maryland,  my  Maryland  I  as 
to  have  inspired  that  famous  lyric. 

Lastly,  to  what  extent  is  Mangan's  poetry  likely  to  live  ? 
It  obviously  cannot  endure  in  the  bulk,  however  musical 
and  individual  its  character,  owing  to  its  want  of  careful 
technique,  its  everlasting  dreariness  of  subject,  and  its 
tendency  to  repetition  run  mad,  which  spoils  the  effect  of 


JAMES   CLARENCE   MANGAN  35 

even  such  a  delightful  piece  of  satire  as    The   Woman  of 
Three  Cows.     A   few  of   his  Irish    poems,    including  My 
Dark   Rosaleen,   The  Lament  for  Banba,   the     Vision  of 
Connaught    in    the    Thirteenth    Century,    his    version    of 
OHusseys  Ode  to  the  Maguire,  and  his  desolate  Siberia 
cannot   perish   from  Anglo-Irish   literature.     Some   of  his 
German   translations  and   so-called   translations   from   the 
Turkish,   such   as    Gone  in   the    Wind,    the    Karamanian 
Exile,  and  the  Howling  Song  of  Al  Mohara,  will  survive 
through  their  perfection  of  colour,  form  and  music  ;  and  the 
interest  attached  to  the  author  of  these  poems  should  for 
their  subjective   interest,  preserve    The   One  Mystery  and 
The  Nameless  One. 

For  these  and  other  poems  of  charming,  though  not  of 
consummate,  quality  we  refer  our  readers  to  Miss  Guiney's 
selection  from  Mangan,  certainly  the  best  that  has  yet  been 
got  together,  though  perhaps  hardly  complete  without  a  few 
additional  poems  recently  hunted  up  by  the  indefatigable 
Mr.  O'Donoghue  from  odd  corners  of  old  Irish  periodicals 
With  one  of  these— apparently  Mangan's  epitome  of  his 
unhappy  life— this  essay  may  fitly  conclude : 

REST  ONLY  IN  THE  GRAVE. 
I  rode  till  I  reached  the  House  of  Wealth  : 
'Twas  filled  with  Riot  and  blighted  health. 
I  rode  till  I  reached  the  House  of  Love  : 
'Twas  vocal  with  sighs  beneath  and  above  ! 
I  rode  till  I  reached  the  House  of  Sin  : 
There  were  shrieks  and  curses  without  and  within. 
I  rode  till  I  reached  the  House  of  Toil  : 
Its  inmates  had  nothing  to  bake  and  boil. 
I  rode  in  search  of  the  House  of  Content, 
But  never  could  reach  it,  far  as  I  went. 
The  House  of  Quiet,  for  strong  and  weak, 
And  Poor  and  Rich,  I  have  still  to  seek. 
That  House  is  narrow  and  dark  and  small, 
But  the  only  Peaceful  House  of  all. 


own 


36  IRISH    LITERARY   AND    MUSICAL   STUDIES 


SIR  SAMUEL  FERGUSON 

SIR  SAMUEL  FERGUSON  was  unquestionably  the  Irish  poet  of 
the  past  century  who  has  most  powerfully  influenced  the 
literary  history  of  his  country.  It  was  in  his  writings  that 
was  decisively  begun  the  great  work  of  restoring  to  Ireland 
the  spiritual  treasure  it  had  sacrificed  in  losing  the  Gaelic 
tongue.  He  was,  however,  no  mere  antiquarian.  He  was 
also  a  scholar,  and  a  patriot  in  the  highest  sense  of  the 
word.  He  had  friends  in  all  parties,  for  he  was  in  no  sense 
a  political  partisan.  Indeed,  though  with  strong  Irish 
National  feeling — of  which  he  gave  evidence  in  some  of  his 
earlier  ballads,  and  which  came  to  the  front  in  his  successful 
defence  of  Richard  Dalton  Williams,  the  Young  Ireland 
poet,  when  tried  for  treason-felony — he  felt  that  the 
highest  duty  he  owed  his  country  was  that  of  a  poet  and 
prose  writer  above  party.  But  in  his  poetic  capacity,  as 
pointed  out  by  Mr.  W.  B.  Yeats,  "  he  was  wiser  than  Young 
Ireland  in  the  choice  of  his  models ;  for  while  drawing  not 
less  than  they  from  purely  Irish  sources,  he  turned  to  the 
great  poets  of  the  world  for  his  style,"  and  notably  to 
Homer :  and  the  result  is  that,  as  Roden  Noel  puts  it, 
"  Congal  and  his  shorter  Irish  heroic  poems  combine  in  a 
striking  manner  the  vague,  undefined  shadowy  grandeur, 
the  supernatural  glamour  of  northern  romance,  with  the 
self-restraint,  distinct  symmetrical  outline,  ordered  proportion 
and  organic  construction  of  the  Greek  classic."  More  than 
this,  as  his  brother  poet  and  friend,  Aubrey  de  Vere,  urges, 
"  its  qualities  are  those  characteristic  of  the  noble,  not  the 
ignoble  poetry — viz.,  passion,  imagination,  vigour,  an  epic 
largeness  of  conception,  wide  human  sympathies,  vivid  and 


SIR   SAMUEL   FERGUSON  37 

truthful  description— while  with  them  it  unites  none  of  the 
vulgar  stimulants  for  exhausted  or  morbid  poetic  appetite, 
whether  the  epicurean  seasoning,  the  sceptical,  or  the 
revolutionary." 

Ferguson   differs  from  those  who  regard  the  realm  of 
poetry   as    another    world    detachable    from    this— a   life 
mystical,   non -human,    non-moral— the  life,  if  you  will    of 
fairy,  demon,  or  demi-god.     Indeed,  he  was  in  no  danger  of 
falling  into  this  illusion.     He   was   absolutely  human  and 
practical;   broad   and  sympathetic-minded   both.     Yet  for 
entire  success  as  a  poet  in  his  particular  day  he  had   to 
struggle   against   difficulties  constitutional,  accidental,  and 
of  his  own  seeking.     His  very  versatility  rendered  difficult 
that  entire  devotion  of  his  energies   to   his  art,  of  which 
Tennyson   is   the   great   modern  example.     He  could  not 
spare  the  time,  even  had  he  possessed  the  taste,  for  that 
fastidious  word-for-word  finish  in  verse  to  which   the  late 
Laureate   accustomed   the   critics,  and   through  them   the 
educated  public,  which  undoubtedly,  for   the   time  being, 
militated  against  the  success  of  Ferguson's  poetry. 

Then  he  was  deliberately  facing  the  fact  that  the  Irish 
themes  he  had  set  his  heart  upon  had  no  public  behind 
them.  A  generation  before,  they  would  have  had  the 
support  of  a  cultured  and  unprovincialised  Irish  upper 
class ;  a  generation  later  they  would  have  claimed  attention, 
in  Ferguson's  hands,  as  the  noblest  outcome  of  the  Irish 
literary  revival.  He  was  therefore  both  before  and  after  his 
time,  and  realised  his  position  to  the  full.  Indeed,  when  I 
once  spoke  to  him  with  regret  of  the  neglect  of  all  but 
Irish  political  literature,  he  acknowledged  it,  but  with  the 
quiet  expression  of  his  confidence  that  "his  time  would 
come."  Edward  Dowden  explains  the  fact  that  Congal 
had  not  hit  the  popular  taste  in  the  following  passage  of  a 
letter  to  Sir  Samuel : 

A  poem  with  epic  breadth  and  thews  is  not  likely  to  be  popular  now 
A  diseased  and  over-sensitive  nerve  is  a  qualification  for  the  writing  of 


38  IRISH    LITERARY   AND    MUSICAL   STUDIES 

poetry  at  present,  much  more  than  a  thoughtful  brain  or  strength  of 
muscle.  Some  little  bit  of  novel  sensibility,  a  delight  in  such  colours 
as  French  milliners  send  over  for  ladies'  bonnets,  or  the  nosing  of 
certain  curious  odours,  is  enough  to  make  the  fortune  of  a  small  poet. 
What  seems  to  me  most  noteworthy  in  your  poems  is  the  union  'of 
culture  with  simplicity  and  strength.  Their  refinement  is  large  and 
strong,  not  curious  and  diseased  ;  and  they  have  spaces  and  move- 
ments which  give  one  a  feeling  like  the  sea  or  the  air  on  a  headland.  I 
had  not  meant  to  say  anything  of  Congal,  but  somehow  this  came  and 
said  itself. 

Nothing  could  be  more  truly  appreciative  of  Ferguson's 
work  than  this.  That  fine  saying,  "  Your  poems  have  spaces 
and  movements  which  give  one  a  feeling  like  the  sea  or  the 
air  on  a  headland,"  may  be  here  illustrated  by  one  of  the 
greatest  passages  in  Congal ;  indeed,  it  in  all  probability 
suggested  the  criticism  to  Dr.  Dowden.  It  may  be  quoted, 
moreover,  as  a  telling  example  of  how  Ferguson's  careless 
or  rough  treatment  of  detail  is  carried  off  by  the  largeness 
of  his  conception  and  movement : 

He  looking  landward  from  the  brow  of  some  great  sea-cape's  head, 
Bray  or  Ben  Edar — sees  beneath,  in  silent  pageant  grand, 
Slow  fields  of  sunshine  spread  o'er  fields  of  rich,  corn-bearing  land, 
Red  glebe  and  meadow  margin  green  commingling  to  the  view 
With  yellow  stubble,  browning  woods,  and  upland  tracts  of  blue  ; 
Then,  sated  with  the  pomp  of  fields,  turns  seaward  to  the  verge 
Where,  mingling  with  the  murmuring  wash  made  by  the  far-down 

surge, 

Comes  up  the  clangorous  song  of  birds  unseen,  that,  low  beneath, 
Poised  off  the  rock,  ply  underfoot ;  and,  'mid  the  blossoming  heath, 
And  mint-sweet  herb  that  loves  the  ledge  rare-air'd,  at  ease  reclined, 
Surveys  the  wide  pale-heaving  floor  crisped  by  a  curling  wind  ; 
With  all  its  shifting,  shadowy  belts,  and  chasing  scopes  of  green, 
Sun-strown,    foam-freckled,    sail-embossed,    and    blackening    squalls 

between, 

And  slant,  cerulean-skirted  showers  that  with  a  drowsy  sound, 
Heard  inward,  of  ebullient  waves,  stalk  all  the  horizon  round  ; 
And,  haply,  being  a  citizen  just  'scaped  from  some  disease 
That  long  has  held  him  sick  indoors,  now,  in  the  brine-fresh  breeze, 
Health-salted,  bathes  ;  and  says,  the  while  he  breathes  reviving  bliss, 
"  I  am  not  good  enough,  O  God,  nor  pure  enough  for  this  !  " 


SIR   SAMUEL   FERGUSON  39 

The  ear  educated  to  Tennyson's  or  Swinburne's  verse 
would  be  jarred  by  the  heavy  aggregation  of  consonants 
here  and  there  in  the  passage.  But  as  a  presentment  of 
cpuntry,  cliff,  and  ocean,  it  is  alike  so  broad  and  delicate  in 
colour  and  movement  that  it  rises  visibly  before  us,  till  the 
echo  of  the  sea  is  in  our  ears,  and  we  breathe  and  smell  its 
keen  savours.  Then  the  human  note  with  which  it  closes  is 
inexpressibly  touching. 

It  is  not,  however,  implied  that  Ferguson  is  wanting  in 
the  musical  ear  or  the  appreciation  of  fine  poetical  crafts- 
manship, but  rather  suggested  that,  unlike  Tennyson  and 
other  writers,  he  is  not  sectus  ad  nnguem  in  everything  he 
attempts,  because  he  is  not  careful  to  be  so.  Moreover, 
like  Wordsworth,  he  did  not  always  write  when  his  best 
mood  was  upon  him.  And  hence  like  Wordsworth  and,  I 
may  add,  Browning,  he  will  live  in  selections,  though  large 
selections,  from  his  works,  rather  than  in  their  entirety. 
Yet,  The  Forging  of  the  Anchor  is  a  remarkably  finished 
achievement  for  a  young  man  of  one-and-twenty,  and  The 
Fairy  Thorn,  another  early  poem,  is  exquisite  wizardry 
itself.  True,  it  appears  to  have  been  conceived  and 
executed  with  a  rapidity  which  was  inspiration,  and  is 
indeed  one  of  Ferguson's  gems  without  flaw. 

Next  come  Ferguson's  Translations  from  the  Irish 
which  arose  from  his  study  of  his  country's  language  along 
with  O'Hagan,  afterwards  Lord  Chancellor,  and  above  all 
George  Fox,  a  young  Belfast  man,  of  whom  he  writes  in 
after  life : 

His  discourse  possessed  a  fascination  equal  to  all  that  I  have  heard 
ascribed  to  that  of  Coleridge,  and  under  his  influence  my  poetic  faculty, 
which  had  already  shown  itself  in  the  ballad  of  Willy  Gilliland, 
acquired  strength  for  the  production  of  The  Forging  of  the  Anchor, 
published  in  Blaekwoodva  May  1832.  We  had  formed  a  private  class 
fcr  the  study  of  Irish.  The  early  history  of  Ulster  had  already  seized 
on  my  imagination,  and  the  Return  of  Claneboy,  a  prose  romance 
which  I  contributed  about  that  time  to  JBlackwood,  may  be  regarded 
as  the  first  indication  of  my  ambition  to  raise  the  native  elements 


40  IRISH    LITERARY   AND    MUSICAL   STUDIES 

of  Irish  History  to  a  dignified  level ;  and  this  ambition,  I  think,  may 
be  taken  as  the  key  to  almost  all  the  literary  work  of  my  subsequent 
life. 

George  Fox  probably  died  young.  "  He  left  Belfast  to 
push  his  fortunes  in  British  Guiana,"  writes  Lady  Ferguson 
in  her  memoirs  of  her  husband,  and  no  doubt  succumbed 
to  its  unhealthy  climate.  His  youthful  friends  heard  no 
more  of  him.  They  spared  no  efforts,  through  a  long 
period  of  years,  to  learn  his  fate. 

When  Ferguson,  in  1864,  published  in  his  Lays  of  the 
Western  Gael  his  Versions  from  the  Irish,  which  had 
appeared  first  in  the  Dublin  University  Magazine  of  1834  in 
the  form  of  translations  with  a  Commentary  from  Hardiman's 
Irish  Minstrelsy,  he  would  not  include  one  of  the  best 
among  them,  as  he  considered  George  Fox  entitled  to  share 
in  the  authorship  of  The  County  Mayo,  and  when  almost 
fifty  years  had  passed  since  his  early  friend  had  been  heard 
of,  and  he,  in  1880,  published  his  Poems,  the  volume  bore 
this  brief  and  touching  dedication — Georgia,  Amico, 
Condiscipulo,  Instauratori. 

Ferguson's  translations  from  the  Irish  differ  from  Miss 
Brooke's  and  Miss  Balfour's  versions  and  those  of  other 
translators  preceding  him,  by  their  assimilation  of  Irish 
idioms  and  the  Irish  spirit  into  English  verse  without 
violence — indeed,  with  a  happy  judgment  which  lends  a 
delightful  effect  to  these  lyrics.  Edward  Walsh  has  scarcely 
excelled  Ferguson  in  this  field;  and  Dr.  Sigerson  and 
Dr.  Hyde,  though  they  come  much  closer  to  the  original 
metres,  rarely  go  past  him  in  poetical  feeling  and  passion. 

For  the  very  character  of  the  originals  calls  for  simple 
treatment,  and  high  polish  would  have  spoilt  Ferguson's 
verse  translations  from  the  Irish. 

Ferguson  was  now  casting  round  for  nobler  themes  to 
work  upon,  whilst  keeping  his  hand  in  at  these  translations 
from  the  Irish.  Patriotic  to  the  core,  he  was  above  all 
things  eager  to  achieve  something  lofty  in  literature  for 


SIR   SAMUEL   FERGUSON  4 1 

Ireland's  sake— something  that  might  help  to  lift  her  from 
the  intellectual  flats  upon  which  she  had  fallen. 

Moreover,  another  Belfast  friend  and  mentor,  Dr. 
Robert  Gordon,  was  keeping  him  up  to  his  highest  poetical 
self  by  a  series  of  memorable  letters,  extracts  from  which 
Lady  Ferguson  gives  in  her  Biography  of  Sir  Samuel,  as  thus  : 
"  You  rejoice  me,  I  speak  seriously,  by  saying  you  are  '  doing.' 
To  be  and  to  do.  O  Ferguson,  those  little  words  contain  the  sum  of  all 
man's  destiny.  You  are  strong,  and  I  would  have  you  strike  some  note 
that  will  reverberate  down  the  vista  of  time.  Will  you,  Ferguson  ?  " 

In  the  course  of  his  delightful  New  Year's  Epistle  to 
Robert  Gordon,  M.D.,  dated  ist  of  January,  1845,  Ferguson 
thus  responds  to  his  friends'  appeal : 

For  ilka  day  I'm  growin'  stranger 
To  speak  my  mind  in  love  or  anger  ; 
And,  hech  !  ere  it  be  muckle  langer, 

You'll  see  appearin* 
Some  offerin's  o'  nae  cauld  haranguer, 

Put  out  for  Erin. 

Lord,  for  ane  day  o'  service  done  her  ! 

Lord,  for  ane  hour's  sunlight  upon  her  ! 

Here,  Fortune,  tak'  warld's  wealth  and  honour, 

You're  no'  my  debtor, 
Let  me  but  rive  ae  link  asunder 

O'  Erin's  fetter  ! 

Let  me  but  help  to  shape  the  sentence 

Will  put  the  pith  o'  independence, 

O'  self-respect  in  self-acquaintance, 
And  manly  pride 

Intil  auld  Eber-Scot's  descendants- 
Take  a'  beside  I 

Let  me  but  help  to  get  the  truth 
Set  fast  in  ilka  brother's  mouth, 
Whatever  accents,  north  or  south, 

His  tongue  may  use, 
And  there's  ambition,  riches,  youth  ; 

Tak'  which  you  choose  ! 

But  before  he  had  ripened  for  the  full  outcome  of  his 


42  IRISH    LITERARY    AND    MUSICAL   STUDIES 

genius  Ferguson  anticipated  it  by  one  of  the  noblest  laments 
in  our  language,  Thomas  Davis:  an  Elegy,  1845,  a 
poignant  expression  of  his  grief  at  the  death  of  his  friend, 
the  famous  young  National  leader. 

Sir  Charles  Gavan  Duffy  tells  us  that  "  Ferguson,  who 
lay  on  a  bed  of  sickness  when  Davis  died,  impatient  that 
for  the  moment  he  could  not  declare  it  in  public,  asked  me 
to  come  to  him,  that  he  might  ease  his  heart  by  expressing 
in  private  his  sense  of  what  he  had  lost.  He  read  me  frag- 
ments of  a  poem  written  under  these  circumstances,  the  most 
Celtic  in  structure  and  spirit  of  all  the  elegies  laid  on  the  tomb 
of  Davis.  The  last  verse  sounded  like  a  prophecy ;  it  was, 
at  any  rate,  a  powerful  incentive  to  take  up  our  task  anew." 
This  poem,  which  has  not  been  as  yet  included  in 
Ferguson's  published  works,  and  is  in  many  respects 
especially  typical  of  his  genius,  now  follows  at  length.  The 
modern  Irish  Celt  has  indeed  inherited  a  wonderful  gift  for 
the  elegy,  as  Moore's  lines  on  the  death  of  Sheridan,  Dr. 
Sigerson's  to  the  memory  of  Isaac  Butt  and  Thomas  Davis's 
own  immortal  lament  for  Owen  Roe  O'Neill  abundantly 
demonstrate. 

LAMENT   FOR  THOMAS   DAVIS. 
I  walked  through  Ballinderry  in  the  spring-time, 

When  the  bud  was  on  the  tree  ; 
And  I  said,  in  every  fresh-ploughed  field  beholding 

The  sowers  striding  free, 
Scattering  broadside  forth  the  corn  in  golden  plenty 

On  the  quick  seed-clasping  soil, 
"  Even  such,  this  day,  among  the  fresh-stirred  hearts  of  Erin, 

Thomas  Davis,  is  thy  toil  !  " 
I  sat  by  Ballyshannon  in  the  summer, 

And  saw  the  salmon  leap  ; 
And  I  said,  as  I  beheld  the  gallant  creatures 

Spring  glittering  from  the  deep, 
Through  the  spray,  and  through  the  prone  heaps  striving  onward 

To  the  calm  clear  streams  above, 

"  So  seekest  thou  thy  native  founts  of  freedom,  Thomas  Davis, 
In  thy  brightness  of  strength  and  love  !  " 


SIR   SAMUEL    FERGUSON  43 

I  stood  on  Derrybawn  in  the  autumn, 

And  I  heard  the  eagle  call, 
With  a  clangorous  cry  of  wrath  and  lamentation 

That  filled  the  wide  mountain  hall, 
O'er  the  bare  deserted  place  of  his  plundered  eyrie  ; 

And  I  said,  as  he  screamed  and  soared, 
"  So  callest  thou,  thou  wrathful  soaring  Thomas  Davis, 

For  a  nation's  rights  restored  ! " 

And,  alas  !  to  think  but  now,  and  thou  art  lying, 

Dear  Davis,  dead  at  thy  mother's  knee  ; 
And  I,  no  mother  near,  on  my  own  sick-bed, 

That  face  on  earth  shall  never  see  ; 
I  may  lie  and  try  to  feel  that  I  am  dreaming, 

I  may  lie  and  try  to  say,  "Thy  will  be  done  " — 
But  a  hundred  such  as  I  will  never  comfort  Erin 

For  the  loss  of  the  noble  son  I 

Young  husbandman  of  Erin's  fruitful  seed-time, 

In  the  fresh  track  of  danger's  plough  ! 
Who  will  walk  the  heavy,  toilsome,  perilous  furrow 

Girt  with  freedom's  seed-sheets  now  ? 
Who  will  banish  with  the  wholesome  crop  of  knowledge 

The  daunting  weed  and  the  bitter  thorn, 
Now  that  thou  thyself  art  but  a  seed  for  hopeful  planting 

Against  the  Resurrection  morn  ? 

Young  salmon  of  the  flood-tide  of  freedom 

That  swells  round  Erin's  shore  ! 
Thou  wilt  leap  against  their  loud  oppressive  torrent 

Of  bigotry  and  hate  no  more  ; 
Drawn  downward  by  their  prone  material  instinct, 

Let  them  thunder  on  their  rocks  and  foam — 
Thou  hast  leapt,  aspiring  soul,  to  founts  beyond  their  raging, 

Where  troubled  waters  never  come  ! 

But  I  grieve  not,  Eagle  of  the  empty  eyrie, 

That  thy  wrathful  cry  is  still  ; 
And  that  the  songs  alone  of  peaceful  mourners 

Are  heard  to-day  on  Erin's  hill ; 
Better  far,  if  brothers'  war  be  destined  for  us, 

(God  avert  that  horrid  day,  I  pray), 
That  ere  our  hands  be  stained  with  slaughter  fratricidal 

Thy  warm  heart  should  be  cold  in  clay. 


44  IRISH    LITERARY   AND    MUSICAL   STUDIES 

But  my  trust  is  strong  in  God,  Who  made  us  brothers, 

That  He  will  not  suffer  their  right  hands 
Which  thou  hast  joined  in  holier  rites  than  wedlock 

To  draw  opposing  brands. 
Oh,  many  a  tuneful  tongue  that  thou  mad'st  vocal 

Would  lie  cold  and  silent  then  ; 
And  songless  long  once  more,  should  often-widowed  Erin 

Mourn  the  loss  of  her  brave  young  men. 

Oh,  brave  young  men,  my  love,  my  pride,  my  promise, 

'Tis  on  you  my  hopes  are  set, 
In  manliness,  in  kindliness,  in  justice, 

To  make  Erin  a  nation  yet ; 
Self-respecting,  self-relying,  self-advancing, 

In  union  or  in  severance,  free  and  strong — 
And  if  God  grant  this,  then,  under  God,  to  Thomas  Davis 

Let  the  greater  praise  belong. 

The  Irish  potato  famine  now  intervened,  and  drove 
Ferguson  into  the  sceva  indignatio  of  Juvenal  at  the  Govern- 
ment mismanagement,  which  had  multiplied  its  horrors  a 
hundredfold. 

No  one  knew  this  better  than  himself,  for  he  was 
secretary  to  the  Irish  Council,  whose  wise  advice,  tendered 
to  the  English  Parliament,  was  rejected  in  favour  of  futile 
experimental  legislation  in  the  way  of  relief-road  making 
and  so  forth.  Convinced  that  a  Parliament  after  Grattan's 
model  would  have  saved  the  country,  he  became  a  Repealer 
and  one  of  the  poets  of  Repeal. 

Deem  not,  O  generous  English  hearts,  who  gave 
Your  noble  aid  our  sinking  Isle  to  save, 
This  breast,  though  heated  in  its  Country's  feud, 
Owns  aught  towards  you  but  perfect  gratitude. 


But,  frankly,  while  we  thank  you  all  who  sent 
Your  alms,  so  thank  we  not  your  Parliament, 
Who,  what  they  gave,  from  treasures  of  our  own 
Gave,  if  you  call  it  giving,  this  half  loan, 
Half  gift  from  the  recipients  to  themselves 
Of  their  own  millions,  be  they  tens  or  twelves  ; 


SIR   SAMUEL   FERGUSON  45 

Our  own  as  well  as  yours  :  our  Irish  brows 

Had  sweated  for  them  ;  though  your  Commons'  House, 

Forgetting  your  four  hundred  millions  debt, 

When  first  in  partnership  our  nations  met, 

Against  our  twenty-four  (you  then  two-fold 

The  poorer  people),  call  them  British  Gold. 

No  ;  for  these  drafts  on  our  United  Banks 

We  owe  no  gratitude,  and  give  no  thanks  ! 

More  than  you'd  give  to  us,  if  Dorsetshire 

Or  York  a  like  assistance  should  require  ; 

Or  than  you  gave  us  when,  to  compensate 

Your  slave-owners,  you  charged  our  common  state 

Twice  the  amount :  no,  but  we  rather  give 

Our  curses,  and  will  give  them  while  we  live, 

To  that  pernicious  blind  conceit  and  pride, 

Wherewith  the  aids  we  asked  you  misapplied. 


Sure,  for  our  wretched  Country's  various  ills 
We've  got,  a  man  would  think,  enough  of  bills — 
Bills  to  make  paupers,  bills  to  feed  them  made  ; 
Bills  to  make  sure  that  paupers'  bills  are  paid  ; 
Bills  in  each  phrase  of  economic  slang  ; 
Bills  to  transport  the  men  they  dare  not  hang. 
(I  mean  no  want  of  courage  physical, 
'Tis  Conscience  doth  make  cowards  of  us  all  !) 

Allowance  must  be  made  for  the  passionate  bitterness  or 
this  invective  from  the  circumstances  that  Ferguson  had 
seen  the  Irish  peasantry  he  loved  dying  of  starvation  before 
his  very  eyes  and  because  of  the  neglect  of  the  British 
Government  of  ordinary  precautions  for  "  more  than  a  third 
of  the  potato  crop  throughout  the  island  was  gone,  in  some 
districts  more  than  half,  and  at  the  same  time  the  bulk  of 
the  remaining  supplies,  cattle  and  corn,  butter,  beef  and 
pork,  which  would  have  fed  all  the  inhabitants,  continued 
to  be  exported  to  England  to  pay  the  rent  of  farms  which 
would  no  longer  yield  the  cultivators  their  ordinary  food." 

Ferguson,  however,  lived  to  turn  this  fine  power  of 
literary  invective  against  the  successors  of  the  Young  Ire- 
land poets  and  patriots  with  whom  he  had  sympathised 


46  IRISH    LITERARY   AND   MUSICAL   STUDIES 

when  he  found  them  descending  from  the  high  aspirations 
and  manly  action  of  Davis  and  Duffy  to  what  he 
characterised  as  "  a  sordid  social  war  of  classes  carried  on 
by  the  vilest  methods." 

In  his  satiric  poems  The  Curse  of  the  Joyces  and 
At  the  Polo  Ground — an  analysis  in  Browning's  manner 
of  Carey's  frame  of  mind  before  giving  the  fatal  signal  to 
the  assassins  of  Mr.  Burke  and  Lord  Frederick  Cavendish 
— and  in  his  Dublin  eclogue  In  Carey's  Footsteps,  he 
exposes  the  cruelties  of  the  boycotting  system  of  political 
agitation  with  unsparing  severity. 

In  1864  appeared  Ferguson's  Lays  of  the  Western 
Gael,  a  gratifying  surprise  even  to  many  of  his  friends, 
owing  to  the  inclusion  in  it  of  fresh  and  finer  work  than 
he  had  yet  achieved.  Their  point  of  departure  is  thus 
well  described  by  Mr.  A.  M.  Williams,  the  American 
critic : 

The  Lays  of  the  Western  Gael  are  a  series  of  ballads  founded  on 
events  in  Celtic  history,  and  derived  from  the  Early  Chronicles  and 
poems.  They  are  original  in  form  and  substance,  the  ballad  form  and 
measure  being  unknown  to  the  early  Celtic  poets  of  Ireland  ;  but  they 
preserve  in  a  wonderful  degree  the  ancient  spirit,  and  give  a  picture  of 
the  ancient  times  with  all  the  art  of  verity.  They  have  a  solemnity  of 
measure  like  the  voice  of  one  of  the  ancient  bards  chanting  ot 

Old  forgotten  far-off  things 
And  battles  long  ago, 

and  they  are  clothed  with  the  mists  of  a  melancholy  age.  They 
include  such  subjects  as  The  aTin  Quest,  ,the  search  of  the  bard  for  the 
lost  lay  of  the  great  cattle-raid  of  Queen  Maeve  of  Connaught,  and  its 
recovery,  by  invocation,  from  the  voice  of  its  dead  author,  who  rises  in 
misty  form  above  his  grave ;  Tht  Healing  of  Conall  Carnach,  a  story  of 
violated  sanctuary  and  its  punishment ;  The  Welshman  of  Tirawley,  one 
of  the  most  spirited  and  original,  and  which  has  been  pronounced  by 
Mr.  Swinburne  as  amongst  the  finest  of  modern  ballads,  telling  of  a 
cruel  mulct  inflicted  upon  the  members  of  a  Welsh  Colony  and  its 
vengeance  ;  and  other  incidents  in  early  Irish  history.  In  his  poems, 
rather  than  in  Macpherson's  Ossian  or  in  the  literal  translations,  will 
the  modern  reader  find  the  voice  of  the  ancient  Celtic  bards  speaking 


SIR   SAMUEL    FERGUSON  47 

to  the  intelligence  of  to-day  in  their  own  tones,  without  false 
change  and  dilution,  or  the  confusion  and  dimness  of  an  ancient 
language. 

Of  the  longer  lays  thus  far  published,  The  Tarn  Quest 
found  the  greatest  acceptance  with  his  poetic  compeers,  and 
the  most  notable  criticism  of  it  was  that  of  Thomas  Aird, 
the  fine  Scottish  poet,  author  of  The  DeviFs  Dream  on  Mount 
Aksbeck: 

In  all  respects  The  Tain  Quest  is  one  of  the  most  striking  poems  of 
our  day.  Specially  do  I  admire  the  artistic  skill  with  which  you 
have  doubled  the  interest  of  the  Quest  itself  by  introducing  in  the 
most  natural  and  unencumbering  way  so  many  of  the  best  points  of  the 
Great  Cattle  Foray,  the  subject-matter  of  the  Tain.  The  shield  has 
long  been  grand  in  poetry  ;  you  have  made  it  grander.  The  refusal  of 
Fergus  to  stir  to  the  force  of  private  sympathy,  but  his  instantaneous 
recognition  of  the  patriotic  necessity  of  song,  is  a  just  and  noble 
conception 

The  power  of  the  Bard  over  the  rude  men  of  Gort ;  the  filial  piety 
of  the  sons  of  Sanchan,  and  their  brotherly  love  ;  that  mysterious  Vapour, 
and  that  terrible  blast  of  entrance,  and  the  closing  malediction  by  the 
Maiden,  are  all  very  notable  towards  the  consummation  of  effect.  As 
for  the  kissing  of  the  champions  in  the  pauses  of  the  fight,  I  know  of 
nothing  in  the  reaches  of  our  human  blood  so  marvellously  striking  and 
sweet ;  you  have  now  made  it  immortal  in  song.  However  admirably 
expressed,  the  last  stanza  is  an  error  in  art.  Surely  you  spoil  the  grand 
close,  and  the  whole  piece,  by  appending  your  own  personality  of 
interference  as  a  commentator  on  the  malediction.  Might  I  not  further 
say  (with  a  peculiar  smile)  you  make  the  preordained  fulfilment  of 
Malison  a  sublime  apology  for  Irish  Grub  Street  ? 

The  sting  in  the  tail  of  Aird's  fine  judgment  is  deserved, 
and  it  is  curious  to  observe  that  Ferguson  has  been 
similarly  unlucky  in  The  Welshmen  of  Tirawley  in  this 
attempt  to  tag  a  comment  on  to  the  end  of  a  tale  which 
he  has  so  nobly  adorned.  That  magnificently  savage  lay 
should  end  with  the  anti-penultimate  stanza. 

This  tendency  to  act  at  times  as  a  commentator  on  his 
own  work  and  to  present  it  at  others  in  a  too  ponderously 
Latinised  form,  as  well  as  the  careless,  not  to  say  bluff, 


48  IRISH    LITERARY   AND    MUSICAL   STUDIES 

disregard  for  verbal  delicacies  into  which  he  now  and  again 
lapses,  are  the  only  proclivities  to  which  exception  can  be 
taken  in  Ferguson's  technique.  For  his  method  is  uniformly 
manly,  and  his  occasional  periods  of  majestic  inspiration 
sweep  our  minor  critical  objections  before  them,  as  the 
blast  from  his  Mananan's  mantle  swept  the  chieftain  and  his 
hound  into  the  valley  like  leaves  before  the  wind. 

We  have  taken  Ferguson  to  our  hearts  as  we  take  our 
best  brother,  loving  his  very  ponderosities  and  carelessnesses 
as  part  and  parcel  of  his  greatness,  as  we  love  the  kindred 
qualities  in  Samuel  Johnson — for  the  sake  of  the  man  and 
the  gentleman. 

In  1872  appeared  Conga!,  which  Ferguson  describes  in 
a  letter  to  Father  Russell  as  an  epic  poem  of  greater  length 
and  higher  literary  pretension  than  his  Lays  of  the  Western 
Gael. 

An  epic  requires  a  great  subject,  and  he  who  writes 
it  must  have  vision  and  manliness  closely  allied  to  his 
nature,  else  how  can  he  realise  the  heroic  ideal?  These 
are  Ferguson's  pre-eminent  qualities.  He  is  manly.  His 
heroes  proclaim  it  in  their  every  action,  their  every  utter- 
ance; and  his  tender  portrait  of  Lafinda  could  only  have 
been  drawn  by  a  gallant  gentleman.  He  has  vision.  The 
terrible  shapes  and  Celtic  superstitions — the  Giant  Walker, 
the  Washer  of  the  Ford — loom  monstrously  before  us  as 
he  sings ;  and  he  marshals  the  contending  hosts  at  Moyra 
with  a  magnificent  realism  to  which  we  know  no  modern 
parallel. 

His  subject  is  a  great  old-world  tale  of  love  and  hate, 
and  ambition  and  jealousy,  and  craft  and  courage — a 
splendid  story  of  the  last  heroic  stand  made  by  Celtic 
Paganism  against  the  Irish  Champions  of  the  Cross. 

But  great  though  much  of  Congal  undoubtedly  is, 
Ferguson's  genius  was  to  break  into  finest  flower  at  the 
last. 

The  volume  of  1880  contains  some  striking  verse  of  a 


SIR   SAMUEL   FERGUSON  49 

religious,  philosophical  and  personal  kind,  including  the 
searching  Two  Voices,  the  trenchant  and  yet  more  touching 
Three  Thoughts,  the  noble  lines  entitled  The  Mornings 
Hinges,  and  the  lofty  Hymn  of  the  Fishermen— -a  poem 
written  after  a  surmounted  danger  of  shipwreck.  But  in 
Deirdre  and  Canary  he  reaches  his  fullest  height  as  a  poet, 
and  the  best  that  has  been  said  or  could  well  be  said  about 
them  comes  from  William  Allingbam  and  Aubrey  de  Vere— 
the  two  Irishmen  of  his  time  whose  opinion  should  interest, 
if  not  influence,  us  most. 

Allingham  wrote  on  receipt  of  the  volume:  "Many 
thoughts  of  my  own  swarmed  about  the  pages  as  I  turned 
them,  like  bees  in  a  lime-tree.  In  your  style  high  culture  is 
reconciled  with  simplicity,  directness,  and  originality ;  and 
nothing  can  be  happier  than  your  enrichment  of  English 
speech  with  Irish  forms  without  the  least  violence.  All  the 
Irish  poems  are  very  remarkable,  but  Deirdre  I  count  the 
chief  triumph.  Its  peculiar  form  of  unity  is  perfectly 
managed,  while  in  general  effect  it  recalls  nothing  so  much 
as  a  Greek  play." 

Mr.  Aubrey  de  Vere  and  Mr.  Yeats,  and  perhaps  the 
larger  proportion  of  the  other  leading  Irish  critics,  prefer 
Conary  to  Deirdre. 

"  It  would  be  difficult,"  writes  De  Vere,  "  to  find,  amid 
our  recent  literature,  a  poem  which  at  once  aims  as  high 
as  Conary  and  as  adequately  fulfils  its  aim  ...  Novel  to 
English  readers  as  is  such  a  poetic  theme,  and  embarrassing 
as  are  a  few  of  the  Gaelic  names,  the  work  belongs  to  the 
'great 'style  of  poetry— that  style  which  is  characterised 
by  simplicity,  breadth  of  effect,  a  careless  strength  full  of 
movement,  but  with  nothing  of  the  merely  sensational  about 
it,  and  an  entire  absence  of  those  unclassic  tricks  that 
belong  to  meaner  verse.  It  has  caught  thoroughly  that  epic 
character  so  remarkable  in  those  Bardic  Legends  which  were 
transmitted  orally  through  ages  when  Homer  must  have  been 
a  name  unknown  in  Ireland." 


50  IRISH    LITERARY   AND    MUSICAL   STUDIES 

To  sum  up  :  though  at  times  over-scholarly  and  nodding 
now  and  again — as  all  the  great  unconscious  poets,  from 
Homer  down,  will  occasionally  nod,  as  opposed  to  the  little 
self-conscious  ones  who  are  never  caught  napping — Ferguson 
is  always  human,  always  simple,  always  strong.  Sense  ever 
goes  before  sound  with  him.  He  is  no  mere  reed  for 
blowing  music  through.  He  takes  you  into  no  gorgeous 
jungle  of  colour  and  scent,  and  stealing  serpent  and  raven- 
ing beast,  where  perspective  is  lost  and  will  paralysed,  and 
passion  riots  unrestrained.  No  !  What  Mr.  W.  B.  Yeats 
finely  wrote  of  him  in  1886  is  still  true  to-day  : 

"  The  author  of  these  poems  is  the  greatest  poet  Ireland 
has  produced,  because  the  most  central  and  most  Celtic. 
Whatever  the  future  may  bring  forth  in  the  way  of  a  truly 
great  and  national  literature — and  now  that  the  race  is  so 
large,  so  widely  spread,  and  so  conscious  of  its  unity,  the 
years  are  ripe — will  find  its  morning  in  these  three  volumes 
of  one  who  was  made  by  the  purifying  flame  of  national 
sentiment  the  one  man  of  his  time  who  wrote  heroic 
poetry — one  who,  among  the  somewhat  sybaritic  singers  of 
his  day,  was  like  some  aged  sea-king  sitting  among  the 
inland  wheat  and  poppies — the  savour  of  the  sea  about  him 
and  its  strength." 


JOSEPH   SHERIDAN   LE   FANU 

WHEN  in  the  year  1880  I  wrote  a  memoir  of  Joseph 
Sheridan  Le  Fanu,  as  a  Preface  to  his  Purctll  Papers, 
published  by  Bentley  and  Son,  I  was  not  aware  that, 
besides  being  the  author  of  the  Irish  poems  contained  in 
that  collection  of  Irish  stories  and  of  the  celebrated 
Shanius  O'Brien,  Le  Fanu  had  anonymously  contributed 
half-a-dozen  other  poems  to  the  Dublin  University  Magazine 
between  the  years  1863  and  1866  ;  two  of  which,  The  Legend 
of  the  Glaive  and  Beatrice,  exhibit  Le  Fanu's  genius  in  a 
new  and  unexpected  light.  They  show  him  to  have  been 
capable  of  dramatic  and  lyrical  creation  on  a  distinctly 
higher  plane  than  he  had  hitherto  reached,  although  the 
forms  in  which  the  drama  and  the  legend  are  cast  are 
clearly  experimental  and  not  always  successful.  The  same 
magnetic  attributes  of  superhuman  mystery,  grim  or  ghastly 
humour  and  diabolic  horror  which  characterise  the  finest 
of  his  prose  fictions  meet  us  again.  But  these  qualities  are 
often  conveyed  with  a  finer  touch,  and  at  times  with  a 
directness  of  suggestion  that  is  overwhelming.  Again,  the 
lurid  terror  of  these  narratives  is  happily  relieved  by  inter- 
ludes of  such  haunting  beauty  of  colour  and  sound,  that  we 
cannot  but  lament  the  lateness  of  this  discovery  of  his 
highest  artistic  self.  Indeed,  our  literature  can  ill  afford 
to  lose  lyrical  drama  with  such  a  stamp  of  appalling  power 
as  is  impressed  on  Beatrice,  or  old-world  idylls  so  full  of 
Gaelic  glamour  as  The  Legend  of  the  Glaive,  and  such  a 
terrible  confession  by  a  drunkard  of  how  he  had  fallen 
irrevocably  into  the  toils  of  the  Enchantress  Drink. 

E    2 


52  IRISH    LITERARY   AND    MUSICAL    STUDIES 

Let  this  criticism  be  judged  by  the  subjoined  extracts : 
CHORUS    FROM    "BEATRICE." 

Sad  night  is  o'er  the  city  of  the  Isles 

And  o'er  a  palace  that  amid  her  glooming 

With  a  radiant  halo  smiles, 

While  music  from  its  windows  booming 

Floats  the  voice  of  masque  and  measure 

Through  distant  domes  and  marble  piles, 

And  hymns  the  jubilee  of  youth  and  pleasure. 

Between  the  ripple  dimly  plashing, 

And  the  dark  roof  looming  high, 

Lost  in  the  funereal  sky, 

Like  many-coloured  jewels  flashing, 

Small  lamps  in  loops  and  rosaries  of  fire, 

Verdant  and  blood-red,  trembling,  turning — 

Yellow  and  blue — in  the  deep  water  burning, 

From  dark  till  dawning 

Illumine  all  the  wide  concave, 

And  plash  and  stain  the  marble  and  the  wave 

From  balconies  in  air 

Th'  emblazoned  silken  awning 

Flows  like  a  lazy  sail ; 

And  gondoliers  down  there, 

And  masks  upon  the  stair, 

Hear  music  swelling  o'er  them  like  a  gale. 

Italian  grace  and  gaiety, 

And  silver-bearded  policy, 

Princes  and  soldiers,  sage  and  great, 

The  craft  and  splendour  of  the  State, 

Proud  dames  and  Adria's  fair  daughters, 

The  sirens  of  Venetian  waters, 

Beautiful  as  summer  dreams 

Dreamed  in  haunted  forest  glade, 

By  silvery  streams  in  leafy  gleams, 

Floating  through  the  shade. 

The  noble  palace  peopled  was  right  meetly, 

And  in  its  wide  saloons  the  dance  went  feally, 

And  high  above  the  hum 

Swelled  the  thunder  and  the  hoot 

Of  theorbo  and  viol,  of  the  hautboy  and  the  flute. 

And  the  roaring  of  the  drum. 


JOSEPH   SHERIDAN    LE   FANU 

SCENE  FROM    "BEATRICE." 

BEATRICE. 

They  lifted  me  down  from  the  giddy  plank 
Into  the  boat  that  rose  and  sank  ; 
The  eager  sails  that  rattle  and  slap 
With  thundering  flap, 
At  a  turn  of  the  tiller  filled  at  last, 
And  stooped  the  mast. 

As  the  wet  rope  raced  through  the  mooring  ring, 
On  the  mad  waves  their  boat  was  free  ; 
And  like  a  wild  bird  on  the  wing, 
With  sudden  dive  and  soaring  swing, 
Still  bending  with  the  breeze  away, 
Away  she  swept  on  the  laughing  sea 
Among  waves  and  romping  sea  and  spray. 

Away  the  dancing  island  goes, 

The  sleeping  headland  dipt  and  rose, 

The  billows,  that  wild  creatures  be 

Of  the  hearty  and  wondrous  sea, 

In  sport  and  power 

Welcome  the  boat  with  snort  and  plash 

And  riotous  dash, 

And  hail  of  foamy  shower. 

High,  spring  high, 

Surge,  in  your  roaring  glee .; 

Fly,  foam,  fly  ! 

And  whirling  mist  of  the  sea  ! 

CHORUS   FROM   "BEATRICE." 
Man  upon  his  journey  hies — 
A  chequered  course  and  variable, 
Walking  through  life  as  he  is  shown 
By  gleams  through  yawning  darkness  thrown — 
By  lights  that  fall  from  Paradise 
And  hues  that  cross  from  hell. 

Can  we  read  his  words  or  ways  ? 
Whence  he  acts,  or  whereto  thinks  ? 
A  vapour  changing  as  we  gaze, 
An  utterance  of  the  Sphinx. 


53 


54  IRISH   LITERARY   AND   MUSICAL   STUDIES 

Still  the  man  our  judgment  baulks  ; 
Good  is  he  ?  or,  is  he  evil  ? 
At  his  right  an  Angel  walks, 
At  his  left  a  Devil. 


PART  OF   A   SCENE  FROM   "BEATRICE. 

Who  enters  ?     Lo  ! 

Passing  phantom-like  the  door, 

A  silent  monk  stands  on  the  floor. 

Is  he  anchorite  or  devil  ? 

High  and  gaunt  this  form  of  evil 

Gliding  noiselessly  has  sought  her, 

As  a  shadow  on  the  water. 

Marble-like  beneath  his  cowl 

Gleams  the  curve  of  his  anguine  scowl, 

The  broad  cold  eyes — that  greenly  slare 

And  ever  seem  to  search  and  smile, 

And  find  in  all  things  something  vile. 


She  did  not  mean  to  greet  him  here  ; 
She  rose  as  people  rise  in  fear  ; 
He  stood  there  in  his  garment  sooty, 
She  stood  gleaming  in  her  glory, 
Face  to  face,  like  Death  and  Beauty, 
In  a  painted  allegory. 


FROM   "THE  LEGEND   OF    THE  GLAIVE." 

Through  the  woods  of  Morrua  and  over  its  root-knotted  flooring 
The  hero  speeds  onward,  alone,  on  his  terrible  message  ; 
When  faint  and  far-off,  like  the  gathering  gallop  of  battle, 
The  hoofs  of  the  hurricane  louder  and  louder  come  leaping. 
Dizzy  lightnings  split  this  way  and  that  in  the  blind  void  above  hirn  ; 
For  a  moment  long  passages  reeling  and  wild  with  the  tempest, 
In  the  blue  mass  and  dazzle  of  lightning,  throb  vivid  and  vanish  ; 
And  white  glare  the  wrinkles  and  knots  of  the  oak-trees  beside  him, 
While  close  overhead  clap  the  quick   mocking   palms  of  the  Storm- 
Fiend. 


JOSEPH    SHERIDAN    LE    FANU  55 

The  forest  opens  as  he  goes, 

And  smitten  trees  in  groups  and  rows 

Beneath  the  tempest's  tune, 

Stand  in  the  mists  of  midnight  drooping, 

By  moss-grown  rocks  fantastic  stooping, 

In  the  blue  shadows  of  the  yellow  moon. 


THE   CROMLECH. 

And  in  the  moonlight,  bleached  as  bones, 
Uprose  the  monumental  stones, 
Meeting  the  hero  suddenly 
With  a  blind  stare 
Dull  as  despair. 

The  formless  boulder  that  blocked  the  dour 
Like  a  robed  monster,  broad  and  hoar, 

He  twice  essayed  to  earth  to  throw 
With  quivering  sinew,  bursting  vein, 

With  grinding  teeth  and  scowling  brow. 
From  his  dark  forehead  with  the  strain, 
Beads  start  and  drop  like  thunder-rain  ; 
Arid  in  the  breathless  tug  and  reek, 
All  his  lithe  body  seems  to  creak. 

The  mighty  stone  to  earth  is  hurled, 
Black  gapes  the  violated  door, 
Through  which  he  rushes,  to  rise  no  more 
Into  this  fair,  sad  world.. 


THORGIL  AND    HIS    GLAIVE. 

Where  high  the  vaults  of  midnight  gape 
In  the  black  waste,  a  blacker  shape — 
And  near  against  a  distant  dark, 
He  could  the  giant  Norseman  mark, 
A  black  tarn's  waters  sitting  by  ; 
Beneath  a  brazen,  stormy  sky, 
That  never  moves  but  dead  doth  lie, 
And  on  the  rock  could  darkly  see 
The  mighty  glaive  beside  his  knee. 
The  hero's  front  and  upreared  form 
Loomed  dim  as  headlands  in  a  storm. 
No  more  will  flicker  passion's  meteors 
O'er  the  dead  shadow  of  his  features, 


56  IRISH   LITERARY   AND   MUSICAL   STUDIES 

Fixed  in  the  apathy  eternal 

That  lulls  him  in  repose  infernal. 

The  cornice  of  his  knotted  brows 

A  direful  shadow  downward  throws 

Upon  his  eyeballs,  dull  and  stark, 

Like  white  stones  glimmering  in  the  dark  ; 

And,  carved  in  their  forlorn  despair, 

His  glooming  features  changeless  wear 

Gigantic  sorrow  and  disdain, 

The  iron  sneer  of  endless  pain. 

From  the  lips  of  the  awful  phantom  woke 

A  voice  ;  and  thus,  by  the  tarn,  it  spoke  : — 

"  Son  of  Malmorra,  what  canst  thou  gather  here  ?  ' 
The  spell  was  broke  that  struck  him  dumb, 
And  held  his  soul  aghast  and  numb, 

With  a  wild  throb, 

A  laugh,  and  sob, 
The  frenzied  courage  came  again 
Of  Cathair,  the  Prince  of  men. 
With  planted  foot,  with  arm  extended, 
And  his  ferine  gaze  distended, 
Back  flowed  the  cataract  of  his  hair 
From  the  gleaming  face  of  the  great  Cathair  ; 
And  he  shouted,  lion-voiced, 
Like  one  defying  who  rejoiced  : — 
"Thorgil,  king  of  the  wintry  sea, 
Of  the  nine-gapped  sword  and  minstrel  glee, 
Of  mountains  dark  and  craggy  valleys, 
Of  the  golden  cup  and  the  hundred  galleys, 
Malmorra's  son,  myself,  have  sworn 
To  take  thy  sword  or  ne'er  return  ! " 
The  Norseman's  phantom,  black  and  dread, 
Turned  not,  lifted  not  his  head. 
Mute,  without  anger  or  alarm 
As  shadow  stretches,  stretched  his  arm  ; 
Upon  the  hilt  his  hand  he  laid, 
The  metal  dull  one  bell-note  made — 
One  cold  flash  from  the  awakened  blade 
Flecked  the  waste  sky  with  flying  glare, 

Like  northern  lights 

That  sport  o'  nights 
Shuddering  across  the  empty  air. 


JOSEPH   SHERIDAN    LE   FANU  57 

High  overhead,  where  died  the  light 
Through  the  wide  caverns  of  the  night, 
The  imprisoned  echoes,  whispering  first, 
Afar  in  moaning  thunders  burst. 
Mortal  armour  nought  avails — 
Shearing  the  air,  the  enchanted  blade 
Of  Thorgil  a  strange  music  made  ; 
The  brazen  concave  of  the  sky 
Returns  its  shrilly  sigh, 
Above — around — along — 
With  the  roaring  shiver  of  a  gong. 

Black  night  around  him  floating,  and  booming  of  the  sea 
Have  borne  away  the  hero  on  the  spirit-maelstrom  free  ; 
The  shadows  round  him  deepen  in  his  soft  and  dreamless 
flight— 

The  pause  of  a  new  birth, 

A  forgetting  of  the  earth, 

Its  action  and  its  thinking, 

A  mighty  whirl  and  sinking, 
A  lapsing  into  Lethe,  and  the  ocean  caves  of  night. 


A    DRUNKARD'S    ADDRESS    TO    A    BOTTLE    OF 
WHISKEY. 

From  what  dripping  cell,  through  what  fairy  glen, 
Where  'mid  old  rocks  and  ruins  the  fox  makes  his  den  ; 
Over  what  lonesome  mountain, 

Acushla  machree ! 

Where  gauger  never  has  trod , 

Sweet  as  the  flowery  sod, 

Wild  as  the  breath 

Of  the  breeze  on  the  heath, 
And  sparklin'  all  o'er  like  the  moon-lighted  fountain, 

Are  you  come  to  me — 

Sorrowful  me  ? 

Dancing — inspirin' — 
My  wild  blood  firin'  ; 
Oh  !  terrible  glory — 
Oh  !  beautiful  siren — 
Come,  tell  the  old  story- 
Come,  light  up  my  fancy,  and  open  my  heart. 


58  IRISH   LITERARY   AND   MUSICAL   STUDIES 

Oh  !  beautiful  ruin — 
My  life — my  undoin' — 
Soft  and  fierce  as  a  pantlieress, 
Dream  of  my  longing,  and  wreck  of  my  soul, 
I  never  knew  love  till  I  loved  you,  enchantheress  ! 

At  first,  when  I  knew  you,  'twas  only  flirtation, 

The  touch  of  a  lip  and  the  flash  of  an  eye  ; 
But  'tis  different  now — 'tis  desperation  ! 
I  worship  before  you, 
I  curse  and  adore  you, 
And  without  you  I'd  die. 

Wirrasthrue  ! 
I  wish  'twas  again 
The  happy  time  when 
I  cared  little  about  you, 
Could  do  well  without  you, 
But  would  just  laugh  and  view  you  ; 
'Tis  little  I  knew  you  ! 

Oh  !  terrible  darlin', 

How  have  you  sought  me, 

Enchanted,  and  caught  me  ? 

See,  now,  where  you've  brought  me — 
To  sleep  by  the  road-side,  and  dress  out  in  rags. 

Think  how  you  found  me  ; 

Dreams  come  around  me — 

The  dew  of  my  childhood,  and  life's  morning  beam  ; 
Now  I  sleep  by  the  road-side,  a  wretch  all  in  rags. 
My  heart  that  sang  merrily  when  I  was  young, 

Swells  up  like  a  billow  and  bursts  in  despair  ; 
And  the  wreck  of  my  hopes  on  sweet  memory  flung, 

And  cries  on  the  air, 
Are  all  that  is  left  of  the  dream. 

Wirrasthrue  ! 
My  father  and  mother, 
The  priest,  and  my  brother — 
Not  a  one  has  a  good  word  for  you. 
But  I  can't  part  you,  darling,  their  preachin's  all  vain  ; 

You'll  burn  in  my  heart  till  these  thin  pulses  stop  ; 
And  the  wild  cup  of  life  in  your  fragrance  I'll  drain 
To  the  last  brilliant  drop. 


JOSEPH   SHERIDAN    LE   FANU  59 

Then  oblivion  will  cover 

The  shame  that  is  over, 
The  brain  that  was  mad,  and  the  heart  that  was  sore. 

Then,  beautiful  witch, 

I'll  be  found — in  a  ditch, 
With  your  kiss  on  my  cold  lips,  and  never  rise  more. 

Le  Fanu,  as  Mr.  T.  W.  Rolleston  writes  in  A  Treasury  of 
Irish  Poetry,  edited  by  Dr.  Stopford  Brooke  and  himself, 
"  was  certainly  one  of  the  most  remarkable  of  Irish  writers. 

In  Uncle  Silas,  in  his  wonderful  tales  of  the  supernatural, 
such  as  The  Watcher,  and  in  a  short  and  less  known  but 
most  masterly  story  The  Room  in  the  Dragon  Volant,  he 
touched  the  springs  of  terror  and  suspense  as  perhaps  no 
other  writer  of  fiction  in  the  language  has  been  able  to  do. 
His  fine  scholarship,  poetic  sense,  and  strong  yet  delicate 
handling  of  language  and  of  incident  give  these  tales  a 
place  quite  apart  among  works  of  sensational  fiction.  But 
perhaps  the  most  interesting  of  all  his  novels  is  The  House 
by  the  Churchyard,  a  wonderful  mixture  of  sentimentalism, 
humour,  tragedy  and  romance. 

His  Legend  of  the  Glaive  shows  the  weird  and  romantic 
touch  which  he  had  at  command,  and  The  Address  to  the 
Bottle  has  much  of  the  almost  savage  energy  which  he 
showed  more  in  certain  scenes  of  Tfie  House  by  tfie  Church- 
yard than  anywhere  else." 

Le  Fanu,  as  the  readers  of  the  Purcell  Papers,  and  more 
recently  of  Seventy  Years  of  Irish  Life  by  his  brother 
William,  will  know,  showed  unusual  talent  for  verse  as  a  boy 
of  fifteen  years  of  age,  as  witness  these  lines,  in  which, 
although  the  thought  is  evidently  as  secondhand  as  that 
pervading  Tennyson's  boyish  lyrics,  the  medium  of  its 
expression  is  distinctly  poetical. 

There  is  an  hour  of  sadness  all  have  known, 

That  weighs  upon  the  heart  we  scarce  know  why  ; 

We  feel  unfriended,  cheerless  and  alone, 
We  ask  no  other  pleasure  but  to  sigh, 

And  muse  on  days  of  happiness  gone  by  : 


60  IRISH   LITERARY   AND   MUSICAL   STUDIES 

A  painful,  lonely  pleasure  which  imparts 
A  calm  regret,  a  deep  serenity, 

That  soothes  the  rankling  of  misfortune's  darts, 
And  kindly  lends  a  solace  even  to  broken  hearts. 

Young  Le  Fanu  was  naturally  a  student,  and  made  good 
use  of  his  father's  excellent  library.  But  though  of  a  dreamy 
and  evidently  unmethodical  disposition,  he  had  his  wits 
about  him  when  they  were  wanted,  as  the  following  anec- 
dote chronicled  by  his  brother  will  show  : 

"One  thing  that  much  depressed  the  Dean  was  his 
habitually  being  late  for  prayers.  One  morning,  breakfast 
was  nearly  over,  and  he  had  not  appeared.  My  father, 
holding  his  watch  in  his  hand,  said  in  his  severest  tones,  '  I 
ask  you,  Joseph,  I  ask  you  seriously,  is  this  right  ? '  '  No, 
sir,'  said  Joe,  glancing  at  the  watch,  '  I'm  sure  it  must  be 
fast.' " 

This  was  an  instance  of  precocious  wit  further  exempli- 
fied by  the  brilliant  piece  of  doggerel  sent  as  a  valentine 

to  a  pretty  Miss  K a  few  years  later,  from  which  we 

may  quote  the  following  : 

Your  frown  or  your  smile  make  me  Savage  or  Gay 

In  action  as  well  as  in  song  ; 
And  if  'tis  decreed  I  at  length  become  Gray, 

Express  but  the  word,  and  I'm  Young. 
And  if  in  the  Church  I  should  ever  aspire 

With  friars  and  abbots  to  cope, 
By  a  nod,  if  you  please,  you  can  make  me  a  Prior, 

By  a  word  you  can  render  me  Pope. 
If  you'd  eat,  I'm  a  Crabbe  ;  if  you'd  cut,  I'm  your  Steele, 

As  sharp  as  you'd  get  from  the  cutler  ; 
I'm  your  Cotton  whene'er  you're  in  want  of  a  reel, 

And  your  livery  carry,  as  Butler. 

He  had  also  an  early  eye  for  a  humorous  situation,  for 
on  another  occasion  an  elderly  woman,  whom  he  had  never 
seen  before  and  never  saw  after,  looked  at  him  as  if  she 
recognised  him. 


JOSEPH    SHERIDAN   LE    FANU  6 1 

WOMAN. — "  O  then,  Masther  Richard,  is  that  yerself?" 

JOSEPH. — "  Of  course  it  is  myself.  Who  else  should  I 
be?" 

WOMAN. — "  Ah,  then,  Masther  Richard,  it's  proud  I  am 
to  see  you.  I  hardly  knew  you  at  first,  you're  grown  so 
much.  And  how  is  the  mistress  and  all  the  family  ?  " 

JOSEPH. — "  All  quite  well,  thank  you.  But  why  can't 
you  ever  come  to  see  us  ?  " 

WOMAN. — "  Ah,  Masther  Richard,  don't  you  know  I 
daren't  face  the  house  since  that  affair  of  the  spoons  ?  " 

JOSEPH. — "  Don't  you  know  that  is  all  forgotten  and 
forgiven  ?  " 

WOMAN. — •"  If  I  knew  that,  I'd  have  been  up  at  the 
house  long  ago." 

JOSEPH. — "  I'll  tell  you  what  to  do;  come  up  to  dinner 
with  the  servants.  You  know  the  hour,  and  you  will  be 
surprised  at  the  welcome  you  will  get." 

WOMAN. — "Well,  please  God,  I  will,  Masther  Richard." 

The  tone  of  ODonogJme,  an  unfinished  poem  written 
at  fifteen,  and  of  his  later  Irish  National  Ballads,  was  due 
to  his  mother,  who,  as  a  girl,  had  been  in  her  heart  more  or 
less  a  rebel,  and  she,  not  the  Dean,  was  the  critic  of  his 
boyish  verse.  She  told  him  of  the  hard  fate  which  in  'g8 
befell  many  of  those  she  knew  and  admired,  including  the 
brothers  Sheares,  and  bequeathed  to  William  Le  Fanu  a 
very  interesting  letter  written,  just  before  his  execution,  by 
John  Sheares  to  .her  father,  Dr.  Dobbin,  in  which  he  defends 
himself  from  the  charge  of  connivance  at  assassination  for 
which  he  was  about  to  suffer  death.  The  character  ot 
Sheares  makes  it  impossible  to  doubt  the  truth  of  these  his 
dying  words.  She  told  him  much  of  Lord  Edward  Fitz- 
Gerald  and  the  fight  he  made  for  his  life,  and  showed  him 
the  dagger  with  which  he  defended  it.  This  dagger  she 
possessed  herself  of,  taking  it  surreptitiously  from  its  owner, 
Major  Swan,  because,  in  her  own  words, — 

"  When  I  saw  the  dagger  in  the  hands  with  which  Lord 


62  IRISH    LITERARY   AND    MUSICAL    STUDIES 

Edward  had  striven  in  the  last  fatal  struggle  for  life  or  death, 
I  felt  that  it  was  not  rightfully  his  who  held  it.  I  knew 
the  spot  in  the  front  drawing-room  where  it  was  laid,  and 
one  evening  I  seized  it,  unobserved,  and  thrust  it  into 
my  bosom ;  I  returned  to  the  company,  where  I  had  to 
sit  for  an  hour.  As  soon  as  we  got  home  I  rushed  up  to 
the  room  which  my  sister  and  I  occupied,  and  plunged  it 
among  the  feathers  of  my  bed,  and  for  upwards  of  twelve 
years  I  lay  every  night  upon  the  bed  which  contained  my 
treasure. 

"  When  I  left  home  I  took  it  with  me.  and  it  has  been  my 
companion  in  all  the  vicissitudes  of  life.  When  he  missed 
it,  Major  Swan  was  greatly  incensed,  and  not  without 
apprehension  that  it  had  been  taken  to  inflict  a  deadly 
revenge 'upon  him,  but  after  a  time  his  anger  and  uneasiness 
subsided." 

At  the  age  of  twenty-five  Le  Fanu  wrote  a  vigorous 
imitation  of  a  street  ballad  bearing  upon  this  subject. 

From  the  year  1826  to  1831  the  Le  Fanu  family  were 
on  the  most  friendly  terms  with  the  peasantry  in  the 
neighbourhood  of  Abington,  in  the  county  of  Limerick,  the 
Dean  of  Emly  being  also  Rector  of  Abington.  To  quote 
William  Le  Fanu's  account  : — "  They  appeared  to  be  de- 
voted to  us.  If  we  had  been  away  for  a  month  or  two,  on 
our  return  they  met  us  in  numbers  some  way  from  our  home, 
took  the  horses  from  the  carriage,  and  drew  it  to  our  house 
amid  deafening  cheers  of  welcome,  and  at  night  bonfires 
blazed  on  all  the  neighbouring  hills.  In  all  their  troubles 
and  difficulties  the  people  came  to  my  father  for  assistance. 
There  was  then  no  dispensary  nor  doctor  near  us,  and 
many  sick  folk  or  their  friends  came  daily  to  my  mother 
for  medicine  and  advice ;  I  have  often  seen  more  than 
twenty  with  her  of  a  morning.  Our  parish  priest  also  was  a 
special  friend  of  ours,  a  constant  visitor  to  our  home.  In 
the  neighbouring  parishes  the  same  kindly  relations  existed 
between  the  priest  and  the  flock  and  the  Protestant  clergy- 


JOSEPH    SHERIDAN    LE    FANU  63 

man.  But  in  1831  all  this  was  suddenly  and  sadly  changed, 
when  the  Tithe  War  came  upon  us." 

A  cousin  of  the  Le  Fanus,  the  Rev.  Charles  Coote,  the 
Rector  of  the  neighbouring  parish  of  Doon,  gave  offence  at 
the  very  commencement  of  the  agitation  by  taking  active 
measures  to  enforce  the  payment  of  his  tithes.  Wherever 
he  or  any  of  his  family  went  they  were  received  with  oppro- 
brium, and  as  frequent  visitors  to  the  Rectory  at  Doon,  the 
Le  Fanus  soon  came  to  be  treated  in  a  similar  way. 

Returning  to  Abingdon  after  a  few  years'  absence,  the 
young  Le  Fanus  met  on  a  steamboat,  the  Garry  Owen, 
plying  between  Limerick  and  Kilrush,  a  famous  character, 
one  Paddy  O'Neill,  whose  music  and  song,  riddling  and 
playing  on  the  bagpipes  cheered  the  passengers  on  the  trip. 
He  was,  moreover,  a  poet,  and  sang  his  own  songs  to  his 
own  accompaniments. 

As  showing  the  friendly  feeling  again  existing  between 
Joseph  and  the  peasants,  his  brother  relates  the 
following  : 

"  One  summer's  evening  my  brother,  who  was  a  prime 
favourite  of  his,  persuaded  Paddy  to  drive  across  with  him 
from  Kilrush  to  Kilkee,  and  there  they  got  up  a  dance  in 
Mrs.  Reade's  lodge,  where  some  of  our  family  were 
sojourning  at  the  time ;  I  am  sorry  to  say  I  was  away  at  the 
time  and  missed  the  fun.  The  dance  music  was  supplied 
by  Paddy's  pipes  and  fiddle,  and  between  the  dances  he 
sang  some  of  his  favourite  songs.  Next  day  my  brother 
wrote  some  doggerel  verses  celebrating  the  dance  .  .  .  ." 
A  copy  was  presented  to  the  highly  delighted  Paddy,  who, 
for  years  after,  sang  them  with  much  applause  to  the 
passengers  on  the  Garry  Owen. 

But  as  Le  Fanu  had  seen  the  best  side  of  Irish  peasant 
life,  he  had  also  seen  its  worst.  His  feelings  as  his  mother's 
son  prompted  him  to  write  Shamus  O'Brien;  his  personal 
experiences  during  the  Tithe  War,  drew  him  away  from  the 
people's  side  in  politics.  He  was  none  the  less  a  "  good 


64  IRISH    LITERARY   AND   MUSICAL   STUDIES 

Irishman "  in  the  National,  not  Nationalist,  sense  of  that 
title. 

Besides  the  poetical  powers  with  which  he  was  endowed, 
in  common  with  his  connections,  the  great  Sheridan,  the 
Dufferins,  and  the  Hon.  Mrs.  Norton,  Sheridan  Le  Fanu 
also  possessed  an  irresistible  humour  and  oratorical  gift  that, 
as  a  student  of  Old  Trinity,  made  him  a  formidable  rival  of 
the  best  of  the  young  debaters  of  his  time  at  the  "  College 
Historical,"  not  a  few  of  whom  eventually  reached  the 
highest  eminence  at  the  Irish  Bar,  after  having  long 
enlivened  and  charmed  St.  Stephen's  by  their  wit  and 
oratory. 

Amongst  his  compeers  he  was  remarkable  for  his  sudden 
fiery  eloquence  of  attack,  and  ready  and  rapid  powers  of 
repartee  when  on  his  defence.  But  Le  Fanu,  whose  under- 
standing was  elevated  by  a  deep  love  of  the  classics,  in 
which  he  took  University  honours,  and  further  heightened 
by  an  admirable  knowledge  of  our  own  great  authors,  was 
not  to  be  tempted  away  by  oratory  from  literature,  his  first 
and,  as  it  proved,  his  last  love. 

Very  soon  after  leaving  college,  and  just  when  he  was 
called  to  the  Bar,  about  the  year  1841,  he  bought  the 
Warder,  a  Dublin  newspaper,  of  which  he  was  editor,  and 
took,  what  many  of  his  best  friends  and  admirers,  looking 
to  his  high  prospects  as  a  barrister,  regarded  at  the  time  as 
a  fatal  step  to  his  career  to  fame. 

Just  before  this  period,  Le  Fanu  had  taken  to  writing 
humorous  Irish  stories,  afterwards  published  in  the  Dublin 
University  Magazine,  such  as  the  Quare  Gander,  Jim 
Sullivan's  Adventure,  The  Ghost  and  the  Bone-setter,  etc. 

These  stories  his  brother,  William  Le  Fanu,  was  in  the 
nabit  of  repeating  for  his  friends'  amusement,  and  about  the 
year  1837,  when  he  was  about  twenty-three  years  of  age, 
Joseph  Le  Fanu  said  to  him  that  he  thought  an  Irish  story 
in  verse  would  tell  well,  and  that  if  he  would  choose  him 
a  subject. suitable  for  recitation,  he  would  write  him  one, 


JOSEPH   SHERIDAN    LE   FANU  65 

"  Write  me  an  Irish  Young  Lochinvar"  said  his  brother, 
and  in  a  few  days  he  handed  him  Pharidhrig  Croohore — 
anglice,  Patrick  Crohore. 

Of  course  this  poem  has  the  disadvantage,  not  only 
of  being  written  after  Young  Lochinvar^  but  also  that  of 
having  been  directly  inspired  by  it,  and  yet,  although 
wanting  in  the  rare  and  graceful  finish  of  the  original,  the 
Irish  copy  has,  we  feel,  so  much  fire  and  feeling,  that  it  at 
least  tempts  us  to  regret  that  Scott's  poem  was  not  written 
in  that  heart-stirring  Northern  dialect,  without  which  many 
of  the  noblest  of  our  British  ballads  would  lose  half  their 
spirit. 

To  return  to  the  year  1837,  Mr.  William  Le  Fanu,  the 
suggester  of  this  ballad,  who  was  from  home  at  the  time, 
now  received  daily  instalments  of  the  second  and  more 
remarkable  of  his  brother's  Irish  poems — Shamus  O'Hricn 
(James  O'Brien) — learning  them  by  heart  as  they  reached 
him,  and,  fortunately,  never  forgetting  them,  for  his  brother 
Joseph  kept  no  copy  of  the  ballad,  and  he  had  himself  to 
write  it  out  from  memory  ten  years  after,  when  the  poem 
was  to  appear  in  the  Dublin  University  Magazine. 

Few  will  deny  that  this  poem  contains  passages  most 
faithfully,  if  fearfully,  picturesque,  and  that  it  is  characterised 
throughout  by  a  profound  pathos  and  an  abundant  humour. 
Can  we  wonder  then  at  the  immense  popularity  with  which 
Samuel  Lover  recited  it  in  the  United  States  ?  For  to 
Lover's  admiration  of  the  poem,  and  his  addition  of  it  to 
his  entertainment,  Shamtts  O'flricn  owes  its  introduction 
into  America,  where  it  is  now  so  popular.  Lover  added 
some  lines  of  his  own  to  the  poem,  making  Shamus  emigrate 
to  the  States,  and  set  up  a  public-house.  These  added 
lines  appeared  in  most  of  the  published  versions  of  the 
ballad,  but  they  are  indifferent  as  verse,  and  certainly  injure 
the  dramatic  effect  of  the  poem. 

Shamus  O'Brien  is  so  generally  attributed  to  Lover 
(indeed,  we  remember  seeing  it  advertised  for  recitation  on 

F 


66  IRISH   LITERARY   AND   MUSICAL   STUDIES 

the  occasion  of  a  benefit  at  a  leading  London  theatre  as 
"  by  Samuel  Lover  ")  that  it  is  a  satisfaction  to  be  able  to 
reproduce  the  following  letter  upon  the  subject  from  Lover 
to  William  Le  Fanu : — 

ASTOR  HOUSE, 

NEW  YORK,  U.S.  AMERICA. 
September  30^,  1846. 
MY  DEAR  LE  FANU,— 

In  reading  over  your  brother's  poem  while  I  crossed  the 
Atlantic,  I  became  more  and  more  impressed  with  its  great  beauty  and 
dramatic  effect,  so  much  so  that  I  determined  to  test  its  effect  in  public, 
and  have  done  so  here,  on  my  first  appearance,  with  the  greatest 
success.  Now,  I  have  no  doubt  there  will  be  great  praises  of  the  poem, 
and  people  will  suppose  most  likely  that  the  composition  is  mine,  and 
as  you  know  (I  take  for  granted)  that  I  would  not  wish  to  wear  a 
borrowed  feather,  I  should  be  glad  to  give  your  brother's  name  as  the 
author,  should  he  not  object  to  have  it  known  ;  but  as  his  writings  are 
often  in  so  different  a  tone,  I  would  not  speak  without  permission  to  do 
so.  It  is  true  that  in  my  programme  my  name  is  attached  to  other 
pieces,  and  no  name  appended  to  the  recitation.  So  far,  you  will  see, 
I  have  done  all  I  could  to  avoid  "appropriating" — the  spirit  of  which 
I  might  have  caught  here  with  Irish  aptitude  ;  but  I  would  like  to  have 
the  means  of  telling  all  whom  it  may  concern  the  name  of  the  author, 
to  whose  head  and  heart  it  does  so  much  honour.  Pray,  my  dear  Le 
Fanu,  inquire,  and  answer  me  here  by  next  packet,  or  as  soon  as 
convenient.  My  success  here  has  been  quite  triumphant. 

Yours  very  truly, 

SAMUEL  LOVER. 

The  outlaw  Kirby,  who  was  "  on  his  keeping "  (*>., 
hiding  from  the  police)  at  the  time  of  his  family's  residence 
in  County  Limerick,  evidently  suggested  much  of  the  devil- 
may-care  character  of  Shamus  O'Brien  to  Le  Fanu. 
With  a  price  upon  his  head,  owing  to  his  connection  with 
agrarian  outrages,  Kirby  could  not  resist  the  temptation  of 
going  to  a  hunt  or  a  coursing  match,  narrowly  escaping 
capture  on  some  of  these  occasions. 

An  informer,  learning  that  Kirby  would  be  at  his 
mother's  house  one  Sunday  night,  communicated  the  fact 
to  Major  Yokes,  of  Limerick,  the  most  active  magistrate  in 


JOSEPH    SHERIDAN    LE    FANU  67 

the  south  of  Ireland,  who  had  more  than  once  been  baffled 
in  his  efforts  to  capture  the  outlaw. 

Old  Mrs.  Kirby  was  in  bed  when  the  Major  and  two 
constables  drew  up  to  the  door,  but,  fortunately,  her 
daughter,  Mary,  had  gone  to  a  wake  in  the  neighbourhood, 
and  stayed  out  all  night.  Kirby,  who  was  sitting  by  the 
fire,  his  pistols  on  a  table  beside  him,  sprang  to  his  feet,  and 
seizing  them,  cried,  "  At  any  rate,  I'll  have  the  life  of  one 
of  them  before  I'm  taken."  "  Whisht  !  you  fool,"  said  his 
mother.  "  Here,  be  quick !  put  on  Mary's  cap,  take  your 
pistols  with  you,  jump  into  bed,  turn  your  face  to  the  wall, 
and  lave  the  rest  to  me." 

He  was  scarcely  in  bed  when  there  was  a  loud  knocking 
at  the  door,  which  his  mother,  having  lit  a  rush,  opened  as 
quickly  as  possible.  In  came  Major  Vokes  and  the 
constables.  "  Where  is  your  son  ?  "  said  Vokes.  "  Plaze 
God,  he's  far  enough  from  ye.  It's  welcome  ye/  are  this 
night,"  she  said.  "  And  thanks  to  the  Lord  it  wasn't 
yesterday  ye  came,  for  it's  me  and  Mary  there  that  strove  to 
make  him  stop  the  night  wid  us ;  but,  thank  God,  he  was 
afraid."  They  searched  the  house,  but  did  not  like  to  disturb 
the  young  girl  in  bed,  and  finding  nothing,  went,  sadly  dis- 
appointed, back  to  Limerick.  The  news  of  Kirby's  escape 
soon  spread  through  the  country.  Vokes  was  much  chaffed, 
but  Kirby  never  slept  another  night  in  his  mother's  house. 

This  incident,  which  is  summarised  from  his  brother's 
book,  does  not  occur  in  Le  Fanu's  Shamus,  but  Mr. 
Jessop  has  seized  the  situation,  and  indeed  improved  upon 
it  for  his  libretto  of  the  opera  of  Shamus  O'Brien  by 
Sir  Charles  V.  Stanford,  which  has  been  received  with  such 
pronounced  popularity. 

It  is  not  as  easy  to  see  how  the  song,  I'm  a  yoting  man 
that  never  yet  was  daunted,  quoted  by  Mr.  W.  Le  Fanu  in 
his  Irish  Recollections,  suggested  to  his  brother  the  plot 
of  Shamus  O'Brien  beyond  that  it  describes,  though 
incoherently  enough,  the  doings  of  an  outlaw,  who  breaks 

F  2 


68  IRISH   LITERARY   AND   MUSICAL   STUDIES 

gaol  at  Nenagh,  and  gets  off  scot-free  after  knocking  down 
the  sentry. 

Le  Fanu's  literary  life  may  be  divided  into  three  distinct 
periods.  During  the  first  of  these,  and  till  his  thirtieth 
year,  he  was  an  Irish  ballad,  song,  and  story  writer,  his 
first  published  story  being  the  Adventures  of  Sir  Robert 
Ardagh,  which  appeared  in  the  Dublin  University  Magazine 
in  1838. 

In  1844  he  was  united  to  Miss  Susan  Bennett,  the 
beautiful  daughter  of  the  late  George  Bennett,  Q.C.  From 
this  time  until  her  decease  in  1858,  he  devoted  his  energies 
almost  entirely  to  Press  work,  making,  however,  his  first 
essays  in  novel  writing  during  that  period.  The  Cock 
and  Anchor,  a  chronicle  of  old  Dublin  city,  his  first  and, 
in  the  opinion  of  competent  critics,  one  of  the  best  of  his 
novels,  seeing  the  light  about  the  year  1850.  Torlogh 
O'Brien  was  its  immediate  successor.  Their  comparative 
want  of  success  when  first  published,  seems  to  have  deterred 
Le  Fanu  from  using  his  pen,  except  as  a  Press  writer,  until 
1863,  when  the  House  by  the  Churchyard  was  published, 
and  was  soon  followed  by  Uncle  Silas,  and  other  well- 
known  novels.  Finally,  Le  Fanu  published  in  the  pages 
of  the  Dublin  University  Magazine,  Beatrice  and  The 
Legend  of  the  Glaive,  revised  editions  of  which  form  the 
specially  notable  feature  in  the  volume  of  his  poems 
edited  by  me. 

Those  who  possessed  the  rare  privilege  of  Le  Fanu's 
friendship,  and  only  they,  can  form  any  idea  of  the  true 
character  of  the  man ;  for  after  the  death  of  his  wife,  to 
whom  he  was  most  deeply  devoted,  he  quite  forsook  general 
society,  in  which  his  fine  features,  distinguished  bearing, 
and  charm  of  conversation  marked  him  out  as  the  beau-ideal 
of  an  Irish  wit  and  scholar  of  the  old  school. 

From  this  society  he  vanished  so  entirely,  that  Dublin, 
always  ready  with  a  nickname,  dubbed  him  "  The  Invisible 
Prince,"  and,  indeed,  he  was  for  long  almost  invisible, 


JOSEPH    SHERIDAN    LE    FANU  69 

except  to  his  family  and  most  familiar  friends,  unless  at  odd 
hours  of  the  evening,  when  he  might  occasionally  be  seen 
stealing,  like  the  ghost  of  his  former  self,  between  his  news- 
paper office  and  his  home  in  Merrion  Square.  Sometimes, 
too,  he  was  to  be  encountered  in  an  old,  out-of-the-way 
bookshop,  poring  over  some  rare  black  letter  Astrology  or 
Demonology. 

To  one  of  these  old  bookshops  he  was  at  one  time  a 
pretty  frequent  visitor,  and  the  bookseller  relates  how  he 
used  to  come  in  and  ask  with  his  peculiarly  pleasant  voice 

and  smile,  "  Any  more  ghost  stories  for  me,  Mr.  ? " 

and  how,  on  a  fresh  one  being  handed  to  him,  he  would 
seldom  leave  the  shop  until  he  had  looked  it  through.  This 
taste  for  the  supernatural  seems  to  have  grown  upon  him 
after  his  wife's  death,  and  influenced  him  so  deeply  that, 
had  he  not  been  possessed  of  a  deal  of  shrewd  common 
sense,  there  might  have  been  danger  of  his  embracing  some 
of  the  visionary  doctrines  in  which  he  was  so  learned.  But 
no  !  even  Spiritualism,  to  which  not  a  few  of  his  brother 
novelists  succumbed,  whilst  affording  congenial  material  for 
our  artist  of  the  superhuman  to  work  upon,  did  not  escape 
his  severest  satire. 

Shortly  after  completing  his  last  novel,  strange  to  say, 
bearing  the  title  Willing  to  Die,  Le  Fanu  breathed  his 
last  at  his  home,  No.  18,  Merrion  Square  South,  at  the  age 
of  fifty-nine. 

"  He  was  a  man,"  writes  the  author  of  a  brief  memoir 
of  him  in  the  Dublin  University  Magazine,  "  who  thought 
deeply,  especially  on  religious  subjects.  To  those  who 
knew  him  he  was  very  dear;  they  admired  him  for  his 
learning,  his  sparkling  wit  and  pleasant  conversation,  and 
loved  him  for  his  manly  virtues,  for  his  noble  and  generous 
qualities,  his  gentleness,  and  his  loving,  affectionate  nature." 
And  all  who  knew  the  man  must  feel  how  deeply  deserved 
are  these  simple  words  of  sincere  regard  for  Joseph 
Sheridan  Le  Fanu. 


70  IRISH    LITERARY   AND   MUSICAL   STUDIES 


WILLIAM   ALLINGHAM 

DESCENDED  from  English  forbears,  the  son  of  a  banker  of 
substance  and  ability  and  of  a  capable  and  charming 
mother  of  the  well-know  Crawford  family,  William  Ailing- 
ham  was  born  on  March  igth,  1824,  at  Ballyshannon.  At 
an  early  age  he  was  sent  to  Mr.  Ray's  school  in  his  native 
town,  and  from  his  class-fellow  and  cousin,  John  Crawford, 
I  have  received  these  hitherto  unpublished  particulars  of 
those  school-days. 

Mr.  Ray  taught  Latin,  nothing  more,  and  the  general 
curriculum  was  evidently  unattractive.  For  though  the  boy 
was  a  particularly  bright  and  clever  one  and  mastered  his 
most  difficult  lessons  with  ease,  the  routine  was  so  dull  and 
irksome  to  him  that  while  devoting  just  sufficient  time  to 
it  to  hold  his  own  in  class,  he  read  widely  and  diligently 
on  his  own  account.  As  a  result  he  often  caused  surprise 
to  his  elders  by  the  fixed  opinions  he  held  on  subjects 
supposed  to  be  above  his  years  and  the  remarkably  clear 
expression  of  them.  Mentally  much  ahead  of  his  compeers 
he  did  not  associate  much  with  them,  but  was  never  so 
happy  as  when  surrounded  by  a  crowd  of  boys  younger 
than  himself.  For  these  he  had  a  great  attraction,  and  his 
power  of  amusing  them  was  inexhaustible.  Games  of 
"  follow  the  leader,"  including  all  sorts  of  difficult  jumps 
and  feats  of  bodily  prowess,  were  led  by  young  Allingham. 

But  perhaps  the  sport  to  which  he  was  most  attached 
was  skating,  which  he  has  so  well  described  in  his  poem 


WILLIAM   ALLINGHAM  71 

Frost  in  the  Holidays.  Yet  whilst  keenly  enjoying  the 
tricks  played  by  one  boy  on  another — and  some  of  these 
were  rough  enough — he  always  kept  the  peace.  He  was 
a  great  lover  of  nature  and  particularly  humane  towards 
dumb  animals,  being  always  ready  to  defend  them  or 
rescue  them  from  the  hands  of  cruel  or  thoughtless  boys. 
But  for  one  of  his  adventurous  spirit  he  was  strangely 
indifferent  to  field  sports.  He  did  not  fish  or  shoot  like  his 
fellows,  or  follow  the  hounds,  abstaining  from  such  pursuits 
on  principle. 

From  Ray's  he  was  sent  to  a  boarding  school  at  Kille- 
shandra,  but  for  a  short  time  only.  Yet  distasteful  as  Ray's 
had  been,  this  school  was  doubly  so  to  him.  By  his  own 
request  he  left  it  and  was  put  into  his  father's  bank  in 
Ballyshannon  in  his  fourteenth  year.  College  life  he  had 
none,  a  circumstance  over  which  he  long  repined,  but  which 
in  the  end  he  regarded  as  having  been  a  benefit  to  him. 
For  he  was  an  indefatigable  student  of  English  literature 
and  natural  science  and  taught  himself  French,  German, 
Latin  and  Greek,  till  he  was  able  to  enjoy  the  classics  and 
the  works  of  Continental  writers  in  the  original,  and  few 
University  students  can  claim  to  have  covered  so  wide  a 
field  of  reading.  Allingham  passed  from  his  father's  bank 
into  the  Excise  in  the  year  1846.  A  few  years  later  his 
cousin  Robert  Crawford  had  this  experience  of  him  : 

"  On  my  return  from  the  University  I  was  engaged  in 
making  a  geological  survey  around  Ballyshannon,  when 
William  became  my  constant  companion.  Nor  could 
there  have  been  a  pleasanter  one  ;  he  was  so  full  of  general 
information,  and  looked  at  everything  from  such  an 
interesting  and  original  point  of  view.  Surgeon  Tighe  of 
the  1 2th  Lancers  attached  himself  to  us  in  these  rambles. 
My  cousin  and  he  were  for  the  most  part  engaged  in 
constant  controversies  on  almost  every  conceivable  topic, 
from  the  formation  of  gneiss  to  the  political  questions  of 
the  day.  It  was  most  amusing  to  hear  the  younger 


72  IRISH    LITERARY   AND   MUSICAL   STUDIES 

philosopher  deftly  conducting  his  attacks  upon  fortresses  of 
opinion  which  the  elder  considered  impregnable.  Indeed, 
he  was  altogether  lacking  in  veneration  for  old-established 
opinions  the  reasonableness  of  which  was  not  apparent  to 
him.  One  comic  case  of  the  kind  I  rememher.  He  was 
taking  lessons  on  the  violin,  but  the  universally  adopted 
shape  of  the  instrument  shocked  his  sense  of  the  fitness  of 
things,  as  he  argued  that  a  rectangular  body  would  admit 
the  sounds  quite  as  well  as  one  of  the  normal  type  with  its 
fantastic  curves,  and  he  carried  his  theory  into  practice,  for 
he  got  Higgins,  the  violin  maker,  to  make  him  one  on  this 
pattern.  What  is  more  he  had  the  courage  of  his  opinions, 
insisting  that  the  tone  of  his  instrument  surpassed  that  of 
any  other  he  had  heard,  notwithstanding  that  there  were  a 
couple  of  Cremonas  in  the  neighbourhood." 

But  his  father,  proud  though  he  was  of  his  son's 
intelligence,  had  little  sympathy  with  his  constant  craving 
for  knowledge.  In  the  bank  manager's  eyes  it  was  not  the 
scholar,  but  the  thorough  business  man  who  ranked  highest. 
From  the  counting-house  the  young  poet  at  last  succeeded 
in  escaping. 

"  Heart-sick  of  more  than  seven  years  of  bank-clerking," 
he  writes, "  I  found  a  door  suddenly  opened,  not  into  an  ideal 
region,  or  anything  like  one,  but  at  least  into  a  roadway 
of  life  somewhat  less  narrow  and  tedious  than  that  in  which 
I  was  plodding."  A  place  had  been  found  for  him  in  the 
Customs,  as  it  was  found  for  another  and  a  greater  dreamer 
on  the  other  side  of  the  Atlantic. 

"In  the  spring  of  1846  I  gladly  took  leave  for  ever  of 
discount  ledgers  and  current  accounts,  and  went  to  Belfast 
for  two  months'  instruction  in  the  duties  of  Principal  Coast 
Officer  of  Customs,  a  tolerably  well-sounding  title,  but 
which  carried  with  it  a  salary  of  but  ;£8o  a  year.  I 
trudged  daily  about  the  docks  and  timber-yards,  learning  to 
measure  logs,  piles  of  planks,  and,  more  troublesome,  ships 
of  tonnage;  indoors,  part  of  the  time  practised  customs 


WILLIAM   ALLINGHAM  73 

book-keeping,  and  talked  to  the  clerks  about  literature  and 
poetry  in  a  way  that  excited  some  astonishment,  but 
on  the  whole,  as  I  found  at  parting,  a  certain  degree  of 
curiosity  and  respect.  I  preached  Tennyson  to  them.  My 
spare  time  was  mostly  spent  in  reading  and  haunting  book- 
sellers' shops,  where,  I  venture  to  say,  I  laid  out  a  good 
deal  more  than  most  people,  in  proportion  to  my  income, 
and  manged  to  get  glimpses  of  many  books  which  I  could 
not  afford  or  did  not  care  to  buy.  I  enjoyed  my  new 
position,  on  the  whole,  without  analysis,  as  a  great  improve- 
ment on  the  bank ;  and  for  the  rest,  my  inner  mind  was 
brimful  of  love  and  poetry,  and  usually  all  external  things 
appeared  trivial  save  in  their  relation  to  them.  Yet  I  am 
reminded,  by  old  memoranda,  that  there  were  sometimes 
overclouding  anxieties  :  sometimes,  but  not  very  frequently, 
from  lack  of  money  ;  more  often  from  longing  for  culture, 
conversation,  opportunity  ;  oftenest  from  fear  of  a  sudden 
development  of  some  form  of  lung  disease,  the  seeds  of 
which  I  supposed  to  be  sown  in  my  bodily  constitution." 
This  weakness  he  outgrew. 

During  his  banking  days  Allingham  had  begun  to  write 
poetry,  Leigh  Hunt's  journal  being  the  first  to  print  his 
lyrics.  Leigh  Hunt  himself  he  met  for  the  first  time  in 
Edwardes  Square  in  1847.  In  1849  Henry  Sutton,  a  poet 
now  too  little  known,  gave  him  a  letter  of  introduction  to 
Coventry  Patmore,  who  later  introduced  him  to  Tennyson, 
with  whom  he  afterwards  became  intimate.  He  also  was 
made  acquainted  with  Mr.  and  Mrs.  Browning,  Emerson, 
Arthur  Hugh  Clough,  George  Eliot,  Thackeray,  and 
Dickens.  Moreover,  Patmore  brought  him  into  the  artist 
group,  which  comprised  Rossetti,  Millais,  and  other 
members  of  the  Pre-Raphaelite  Brotherhood. 

Allingham's  acquaintance  with  Rossetti  ripened  into 
friendship,  and  the  letters  of  Dante  Gabriel  Rossetti  to 
William  Allingham,  edited  by  Dr.  Birkbeck  Hill,  record  the 
chief  facts  of  his  life  and  literary  friendships.  Much  supple- 


74  IRISH   LITERARY   AND    MUSICAL   STUDIES 

mentary  detail,  however,  is  to  be  found  in  a  set  of  remi- 
niscences chiefly  relating  to  Tennyson  and  Carlyle,  which 
Mrs.  Allingham  has  edited.  For  it  should  be  added  that 
Leigh  Hunt  introduced  our  poet  to  Carlyle  in  early  days, 
and  that  later  on  they  became  close  companions.  In  the 
year  1862  Allingham  came  over  to  London,  still  engaged  in 
the  Customs,  but  he  disliked  the  noise  and  the  confinement 
of  city  life  near  the  docks,  and  was  very  glad  of  a  transfer 
to  Lymington,  where  for  seven  years  he  saw  much  of 
Tennyson. 

He  retired  from  the  Government  service  in  1870,  when 
he  became  sub-editor,  under  Mr.  Froude,  of  Fraser's 
Magazine,  succeeding  him  as  editor  in  1874.  It  was  during 
this  period  that  I  became  personally  acquainted  with  the  poet. 
He  was  then  a  well  preserved  man  of  middle  age,  and  I 
agree  in  Nathaniel  Hawthorne's  description  of  his  looks  as 
"  intelligent,  dark,  pleasing,  and  not  at  all  John  Bullish." 
His  voice  was  musical,  touched  with  the  Donegal  accent, 
but  his  pronunciation  of  English  was  finely  correct  and  he 
was  a  most  fascinating  conversationalist,  who,  if  he  did  not 
set  the  table  in  a  roar,  always  started  it  smiling  and 
thinking. 

Much  my  senior,  he  was  singularly  courteous  to  my 
young  opinions,  and  I  well  remember  that  when  I  sent  my 
first  long  poem  to  fraser,  calling  it  Vox  Vcris,  and  on 
getting,  no  reply,  perhaps  too  impatiently  suggested  that 
spring  was  passing  and  my  verses  would  soon  be  out  of 
date,  he  replied  in  choice  Latin,  "  Spring  is  ever  with  us," 
at  the  same  time  accepting  the  poem.  We  became  engaged 
to  be  married  at  about  the  same  time,  and  I  had  the  pleasure 
of  meeting  him  and  his  then  fiancee,  Miss  Helen  Paterson, 
the  well-known  water-colour  artist  and  book  illustrator,  at  the 
house  of  Tom  Taylor,  the  dramatist,  whose  wife  arranged 
the  Irish  airs  collected  by  Allingham  and  enriched  by  his 
lyrics. 

Of  Carlyle  he  saw  much  more  than  most  of  that  great 


WILLIAM   ALLINGHAM  75 

man's  friends,  for  during  some  years  scarcely  a  week  went 
by  in  which  they  did  not  walk  together.  "  Strange  to  say," 
writes  Dr.  Hill,  "  this  intimacy  has  been  passed  over 
in  total  silence  by  Mr.  Froude.  In  the  four  volumes  of 
his  hero's  life  there  are  sins  of  omission  as  well  as  of 
commission." 

Allingham  used  to  recount  how  Carlyle  would  sometimes 
begin  by  flatly  contradicting  him,  and  end  by  tacitly  adopting 
what  he  had  said.  One  day  the  old  man  was  describing  his 
interview  with  the  Queen  at  the  Dean  of  Westminster's. 
"  She  came  sliding  into  the  room,"  he  said — "  as  if  on 
wheels,"  exclaimed  Allingham,  interrupting  him.  "  Not  at 
all,  Allingham,"  he  gruffly  replied.  A  few  days  later  his 
friend  overheard  him  telling  the  story  to  Mr.  Lecky.  "  The 
Queen,"  he  said,  "  came  sliding  into  the  room  as  if  on 
wheels,"  and  in  that  form  he  ever  afterwards  told  it.  He  used 
to  add  that  he  saw  that  he  was  expected  to  stand  during 
the  interview,  but  that  he  took  hold  of  a  chair,  and  saying 
that  he  hoped  Her  Majesty  would  allow  an  old  man  to  sit 
down,  down  he  sat. 

During  his  connection  with  Frasers  Magazine,  Ailing- 
ham  lived  near  Carlyle,  in  Chelsea,  and  walked  out  regu- 
larly with  him  on  several  afternoons  of  each  week.  It  was 
at  his  suggestion  that  Allingham  started  a  series  of  chapters 
on  Irish  history  in  Fraser. 

But  Allingham's  walks  were  not  all  strolls  with  brother 
men  of  letters.  A  large  proportion  of  his  prose  work  and 
much  of  his  best  poetical  description  had  their  origin  in 
solitary  rambles  undertaken  from  his  boyhood  upwards,  and 
which  he  kept  up  all  through  his  life.  In  this  way  as 
"  Patricius  Walker  "  he  tramped  through  Ireland,  England, 
Wales,  and  Scotland,  collecting  his  "  harvest  of  the  quiet 
eye,"  studying  the  country  folk  as  he  went,  musing  over  the 
great  cathedrals  and  abbeys,  and  reviving  recollections  of 
Swift  and  Prior,  Herbert  and  Dickens,  Burns  and  Scott,  on 
the  very  ground  where  they  had  walked  and  talked,  written 


7  6  IRISH    LITERARY   AND    MUSICAL   STUDIES 

and  sung.  These  rambles  awakened  many  an  interesting 
train  of  thought,  and  his  records  of  them  crystallise  into 
charming  essays,  amongst  which  we  can  trace  the  germs  of 
subsequent  poems. 

His  later  poems  give  a  delightful  picture  of  his  home  life 
in  Surrey,  and  during  this  period  Allingham  saw  Tennyson 
several  times  each  summer,  when  the  Laureate  and  his  wife 
came  to  Blackdown.  Eraser's  Magazine  had  by  this  time 
ceased  to  be,  and  Allingham  occupied  his  time  with  prose 
and  verse  composition  entirely,  including  the  preparation 
of  his  various  works  for  the  Press,  as  well  as  a  complete 
edition  of  them. 

He  had  a  fall  from  his  horse  in  the  year  1888,  from 
which  serious  consequences  ensued.  He  removed  to 
Hampstead  in  bad  health,  and  died  on  November  i8th, 
1889. 

In  the  preface  to  The  Music  Master,  published  in  1855, 
Allingham  states  that  five  of  the  songs  or  ballads,  namely, 
The  Milkmaid,  The  Girl's  Lamentation,  Lovely  Mary 
Donnelly,  Nanny's  Sailor  Lad,  and  The  Nobleman's 
Wedding,  have  already  had  an  Irish  circulation  as 
halfpenny  ballads,  and  the  first  three  were  written  for  this 
purpose. 

This  statement  is  explained  in  Dr.  Birkbeck  Hill's 
letters  of  Dante  Gabriel  Rossetti  to  William  Allingham. 
In  evening  walks  at  Ballyshannon  he  would  hear  the  Irish 
girls  at  their  cottage  doors  singing  old  ballads  which  he 
would  pick  up.  If  they  were  broken  or  incomplete  he 
would  add  to  them  or  finish  them ;  if  they  were  improper 
he  would  refine  them.  He  could  not  get  them  sung  till  he 
got  the  Dublin  Catnach  of  that  day  to  print  them  on  long 
strips  of  blue  paper,  like  old  songs ;  and  if  about  the  sea, 
with  the  old  rough  woodcut  of  a  ship  at  the  top.  He 
either  gave  them  away  or  they  were  sold  in  the  neighbour- 
hood. Then,  in  his  evening  walks,  he  had  at  last  the 
pleasure  of  hearing  some  of  his  own  ballads  sung  at  the 


WILLIAM   ALLINGHAM  77 

cottage  doors  by  the  crooning  lasses,  who  were  quite 
unaware  that  it  was  the  author  who  was  passing  by.  This 
is  exactly  what  Oliver  Goldsmith  had  done  a  century 
before,  when  a  student  of  Trinity  College,  Dublin,  though 
the  lanes  in  which  he  listened  to  his  ballads  were  very 
other  from  those  at  beautiful  Ballyshannon. 

In  this  connection  Allingham  raises  a  very  interesting 
literary  question.  He  states  he  did  not  find  it  easy  in 
ballad  writing  to  employ  a  diction  that  might  hope  to  come 
home  to  the  English-speaking  Irish  peasant  using  his 
customary  phraseology,  and  also  keep  within  the  laws 
of  poetic  taste  and  the  rules  of  grammar ;  "  for  that 
phraseology,  being  as  regards  its  structural  peculiarities 
but  an  imperfect  or  distorted  expression,  not  an  ancient 
dialect  like  that  of  Scotland,  is  generally  too  corrupt, 
though  often  forcible,  to  bear  transplantation  into  poetry. 
Only  familiar  experience,  too,  and  constant  attention  can 
enable  one  to  use  words  in  the  exact  significance  which  the 
popular  custom  has  assigned.  For  instance,  among  the 
Irish  peasantry  c  distress,'  as  far  as  I  know,  always  means 
bodily  want,  '  trouble '  affliction  of  mind,  '  misery ' 
penuriousness,  '  care '  responsibility,  and  '  sorrow '  com- 
monly means  ill-luck  or  misfortune,  while  '  sorry  '  has  the 
usual  dictionary  meaning.  From  these  conditions  it  comes 
that  the  choice  of  words  for  poetry  in  Irish-English  is 
narrowly  limited,  instead  of  there  being  both  that  variety 
and  raciness  which  is  sometimes  in  the  gift  of  a  genuine 
peculiar  dialect." 

But  after  fifteen  years'  experience,  Allingham  qualifies 
the  strong  term  "  imperfect  or  distorted  expression,"  as 
applied  to  the  structural  peculiarities  of  the  Irish  peasants' 
phraseology,  to  mean  unusual  forms,  some  of  them  old- 
fashioned  English,  some  translated  or  adapted  from  Gaelic 
forms.  This  is  a  very  important  modification  of  view,  and 
surely  such  forms,  derived  as  they  are  from  Shakespearean 
English  and  classical  Gaelic,  are  as  ancient  and  respectable 


78  IRISH    LITERARY   AND   MUSICAL   STUDIES 

in  their  historic  and  literary  associations  as  the  idioms  ot 
the  modern  Scotch  dialect. 

Allingham's  final  concession  that  some  not  unimportant 
poetical  results  might  flow  from  a  judicious  treatment  of 
Irish  dialect  has  been  more  than  justified  by  the  event. 
The  water  has  been  flowing  for  thirty-three  years  under 
Essex — now  the  O'Connell — Bridge  since  then,  and  we  have 
half-a-dozen  writers  of  successful  Irish-English  dialect  poetry, 
amongst  whom  may  be  mentioned  Moira  O'Neill,  Francis 
Fahy,  P.  J.  McCall,  George  Savage  Armstrong,  John 
Stephenson,  and  others,  whilst  quite  as  much  interest 
attaches  to  "  Gaelic  English,"  now  familiar  in  the  prose  and 
poetry  of  Douglas  Hyde  and  the  plays  of  Synge,  Yeats, 
Boyle,  Lady  Gregory,  and  other  dramatists  of  the  Irish 
Literary  Theatre.  Allingham  has,  however,  very  justly 
pointed  out  that  during  his  time  Irish-English  has  never 
been  properly  examined,  though  quite  recently  this  deficiency 
has  been  atoned  for  by  Dr.  Joyce  in  his  admirable  little 
volume,  The  English  we  speak  in  Ireland  published  by 
Longmans  for  only  half-a-crown. 

Allingham,  in  spite  of  his  preface  to  his  1855  edition, 
returned  to  Irish  ballad  writing,  and  may  be  said  to  have 
achieved  his  masterpiece  in  the  Winding  Banks  of  Erne 
or  the  Emigranfs  Adieu  to  Bally  shannon,  a  ballad  which 
has  gone  round  the  world,  in  spite  of  Mr.  Stephen  Gwynn's 
statement  that  it  is  too  little  known.  To  readers  of  the 
class  to  whom  Mr.  Gwynn  has  addressed  his  delightful 
Highways  and  Byways  in  Donegal  and  Antrim  this  is 
doubtless  true,  but  the  beautiful  ballad  has  reached  the 
hearts  of  the  Irish  people,  wedded  to  the  haunting  old  air 
to  which  it  is  set. 

It  is  still  difficult  to  fix  Allingham's  position  in  the 
poetical  hierarchy.  This  is  undoubtedly  due  to  his 
remarkable  open-mindedness  to  the  influences  of  both 
nature  and  art.  A  lover  of  nature  before  he  could  read, 
Allingham,  almost  as  soon  as  he  could  do  so,  saturated 


WILLIAM   ALLINGHAM  79 

himself  with  Tennyson's  poems.  Then,  as  has  been  pointed 
out,  he  was  brought  into  touch  with  the  Pre-Raphaelite 
Brotherhood,  and  caught  some  of  their  inspiration,  but  he 
was  none  the  less  an  "open-air  poet,"  which  Rossetti 
certainly  was  not,  and  wholly  original  in  all  his  best  work. 
But  with  Irish  nature  and  Irish  human  nature  he  had  most 
affinity,  though  his  Anglo-Irish  race  and  creed  kept  him, 
like  Ferguson,  apart  from,  though  not  without  warm  sym- 
pathy for,  his  Celtic  compatriots,  literary  and  political.  He 
lamented  the  destruction  of  early  Irish  civilisation  and  the 
internecine  feud,  political  and  religious,  between  Saxon  and 
Celt.  If  Home  Rule  could  make  Ireland  as  "  homely,"  as 
he  puts  it,  "  as  Devonshire,"  which  delighted  him  by  its 
happy  union  of  Celtic  and  Saxon  characteristics,  he  would 
have  given  his  vote  for  Home  Rule,  but  he  dreaded 
leaving  the  dissident  elements  in  Ireland  to  take  care  of 
themselves.  Yet  he  was  proud  to  call  himself  an  Irishman, 
and  Carlyle  got  little  change  out  of  him  when  he  insisted 
that  Allingham  was  an  Anglian  name,  meaning  the  "  hame  " 
or  "  home  "  of  one  of  the  Ellings. 

His  earliest  volume  contains  five  Irish  ballads. 
Lawrence  Bloomfield  is  an  entirely  Irish  theme,  and  his 
last  collection  of  Irish  songs  and  poems  consists  of  thirty- 
two  pieces  written  round  "Ballyshanny."  But  this  is  not  all, 
as  Lionel  Johnson  finely  puts  it  in  his  estimate  of  Allingham 
in  The  Treasury  of  Irish  Poetry p,  edited  by  Stopford 
Brooke  and  Rolleston.  "  Song  upon  song  makes  no  mention, 
direct  or  indirect,  of  Ireland,  yet  reveals  an  Irish  atmosphere 
and  temperament.  As  the  outward  aspect  of  the  man  so 
is  his  characteristic  work,  the  work  of  a  poet  who  is  many 
things  but  always  essentially  an  Irishman  of  the  secluded 
west,  with  ancient  visions  and  ponderings  in  his  heart,  and 
the  gift  of  tears  and  smiles.  He  passed  along  his  way 
alone,  with  a  heart  responding,  a  soul  vibrating  to  the 
voices  of  nature  and  of  tranquil  lives,  and  to  him  came 
those  voices  in  Irish.  He  wrote  much  ambitious  work 


8o  IRISH    LITERARY   AND    MUSICAL   STUDIES 

which  may  not  live,  but  his  lyric  voice  of  singular  sweetness, 
his  muse  of  passionate  and  pensive  meditation,  his  poetic 
consecration  of  common  things,  his  mingled  aloofness  and 
homeliness  assured  him  a  secure  place  among  the  poets  of 
his  land  and  the  Irish  voices  which  never  will  fall  silent ; 
and  though  the  Irish  cause  receives  from  him  but  little 
direct  encouragement  or  help,  let  it  be  remembered  that 
Allingham  wrote  this  great  and  treasurable  truth  : 

We're  one  at  heart  if  you  be  Ireland's  friend, 
Though  leagues  asunder  our  opinions  tend, 
There  are  but  two  great  parties  in  the  end." 

Lionel  Johnson  has  not  done  him  justice  in  the  matter 
of  his  assistance  to  the  Irish  cause  if,  as  seems  almost 
certain,  Lawrence  Bloomfield  first  fired  Gladstone's 
imagination  upon  the  Irish  Land  Question. 

For  a  highly  eulogistic  review  of  this  poem  in  The 
At/ienceum,  in  which  statesmen  were  besought  to  read  it, 
was  followed  by  an  invitation  to  the  poet  to  breakfast  with 
the  famous  Irish  land-law  reformer.  Let  me  press  my  point 
that  Allingham  was  a  good  Irishman  on  Irish  questions  by 
a  few  passages  from  this  poem,  which  both  Stopford  Brooke 
and  Lionel  Johnson  fitly  describe  as  combining  the 
descriptive  grace  of  Goldsmith  and  the  ironic  force  of 
Crabbe.  Very  justly  indeed  Lawrence  Bloomfield  has 
been  called  the  epic  of  the  Irish  Land  Question. 


SIR  ULICK  HARVEY. 

You  find  in  old  Sir  Ulick  Harvey's  face 
The  looks  of  long  command  and  comely  race  ; 
No  small  man  sees  a  brother  in  those  eyes 
Of  calm  and  frosty  blue,  like  winter  skies  ; 
Courteous  his  voice,  yet  all  the  pride  is  there, 
Pride  like  a  halo  crowns  the  silvery  hair  ; 
'Tis  unmisgiving  pride  that  makes  him  frank 
With  humble  folk,  and  dress  beneath  his  rank. 


WILLIAM    ALLINGHAM  8 1 

Born  in  the  purple,  he  could  hardly  know 
Less  of  the  tides  of  life  that  round  him  flow. 
The  Laws  were  for  the  Higher  Classes  made  ; 
But  while  the  Lower  gratefully  obey'd, 
To  patronise  them  you  had  his  consent, 
Promote  their  comfort,  to  a  safe  extent, 
And  teach  them — just  enough,  and  not  too  much  ; 
Most  careful  lest  with  impious  hand  you  touch 
Order  and  grade  as  planned  by  Providence. 


He  sometimes  took  a  well-meant  scheme  in  hand, 
Which  must  be  done  exactly  as  he  plann'd  ; 
His  judgment  feeble,  and  his  self-will  strong, 
He  had  his  way,  and  that  was  mostly  wrong. 
The  whim  was  such,  that  seized  his  mind  of  late, 
To  "square"  the  farms  on  all  his  wide  estate  ; 
Tim's  mountain  grazing,  Peter's  lough-side  patch, 
This  onion-field  of  Ted's  that  few  could  match, 
Phil's  earliest  ridges,  Bartly's  bog,  worse  hap  ! 
By  mere  new  lines  across  his  Honour's  map 
From  ancient  holdings  have  been  dipt  away, 
Despite  the  loud  complaints,  or  dumb  dismay. 

LORD  CRASHTON— THE  ABSENTEE  LANDLORD. 

Joining  Sir  Ulick's  at  the  river's  bend, 
Lord  Crashton's  acres  east  and  west  extend  ; 
Great  owner  here,  in  England  greater  still. 
As  poor  folk  say,  "  The  world's  divided  ill." 
On  every  pleasure  men  can  buy  with  gold 
He  surfeited,  and  now,  diseased  and  old, 
He  lives  abroad  ;  a  firm  in  Molesworth  Street 
Doing  what  their  attorneyship  thinks  meet. 


Twice  only  in  the  memory  of  mankind 

Lord  Crashton's  proud  and  noble  self  appear'd  ; 

Up-river,  last  time,  in  his  yacht  he  steer'd, 

With  Maltese  valet  and  Parisian  cook, 

And  one  on  whom  askance  the  gentry  look, 

Altho'  a  pretty,  well-dress'd  demoiselle — 

Not  Lady  Crashton,  who,  as  gossips  tell, 

Goes  her  own  wicked  way.     They  stopped  a  week  ; 


82  IRISH   LITERARY   AND   MUSICAL   STUDIES 

Then,  with  gay  ribbons  fluttering  from  the  peak, 

And  snowy  skirts  wide  spread,  on  either  hand, 

The  Aphrodite  curtsied  to  the  land, 

And  glided  off.     My  Lord,  with  gouty  legs, 

Drinks  Baden-Baden  water,  and  life's  dregs ; 

With  cynic  jest  inlays  his  black  despair, 

And  curses  all  things  from  his  easy  chair. 


FlNLAY. 

Finlay,  next  landlord  (I'll  abridge  the  tale), 

Prince  of  Glenawn,  a  low  and  fertile  vale, 

No  fool  by  birth,  but  hard,  and  praised  for  wise, 

The  more  he  learn'd  all  softness  to  despise, 

Married  a  shrew  for  money,  louts  begot, 

Debased  his  wishes  to  a  vulgar  lot, 

To  pence  and  pounds  coin'd  all  his  mother-wit, 

And  ossified  his  nature  bit  by  bit. 

A  dull,  cold  home,  devoid  of  every  grace, 

Distrust  and  dread  in  each  dependent's  face, 

Bullocks  and  turnips,  mighty  stacks  of  grain, 

Plethoric  purse,  impoverished  heart  and  brain — 

Such  Finlay's  life  ;  and  when  that  life  shall  end, 

He'll  die  as  no  man's  debtor,  no  man's  friend. 


TOM  DYSART. 

Unlike  this  careful  management  (between 

The  two,  Sir  U  lick's  townlands  intervene) 

Is  that  of  Termon  on  the  river-side, 

Domain  and  mansion  of  insolvent  pride, 

Where  Dysart,  drawing  from  ancestral  ground 

One  sterling  shilling  for  each  phantom  pound 

Of  rent-roll  lives,  when  all  the  truth  is  known, 

Mere  factor  in  the  place  he  calls  his  own  ; 

Through  mortgages  and  bonds,  one  wide-spread  maze, 

Steps,  dances,  doubles  round  by  devious  ways, 

While  creditor,  to  creditor  a  foe, 

Hangs  dubious  o'er  the  vast  imbroglio. 

And  thus,  minute  in  bargain  where  he  can, 

There,  closing  quick  with  ready-money  man, 


WILLIAM   ALLINGHAM  83 

Despised  for  cunning,  and  for  malice  fear'd, 
Yet  still  by  custom  and  old  name  endear'd, 
To  Keltic  minds,  who  also  better  like 
A  rule  of  thumb  than  Cough's  arithmetic, 
Tom  Dysart  shuffles  on,  to  this  good  day, 
Let  creditors  and  courts  do  what  they  may. 


ISAAC  BROWN. 

Pass  on  to  Isaac  Brown,  a  man  elect, 

Wesleyan  stout,  our  wealthiest  of  his  sect ; 

Who  bought  and  still  buys  land,  none  quite  sees  how, 

Whilst  all  his  shrewdness  and  success  allow. 

On  Crashton's  mortgage  he  has  money  lent, 

He  takes  a  quiet  bill  at  ten  per  cent., 

The  local  public  business  much  he  sways, 

He's  learn'd  in  every  neighbour's  means  and  ways, 

For  comfort  cares,  for  fashion  not  a  whit, 

Nor  if  the  gentry  to  their  ranks  admit. 

All  preachers  love  him  ;  he  can  best  afford 

The  unctuous  converse  and  the  unctuous  board  ; 

Ev'n  the  poor  nag,  slow-rattling  up  the  road 

In  ancient  rusty  gig  a  pious  load, 

Wags  his  weak  tail,  and  strikes  a  brisker  trot, 

Approaching  Brownstown,  Isaac's  pleasant  lot. 

For  though  at  Poor-House  Board  was  never  known 

A  flintier  Guardian-angel  than  good  Brown, 

As  each  old  hag  and  shivering  child  can  tell, — 

Go  dine  with  Isaac,  and  he  feeds  you  well. 

And  hear  him  pray,  with  fiercely  close-shut  eyes  ! 
Gentle  at  first  the  measured  accents  rise, 
But  soon  he  waxes  loud,  and  storms  the  skies. 
Deep  is  the  chest  and  powerful  bass  the  voice, 
The  language  of  a  true  celestial  choice  ; 
Handorgan-wise  the  holy  phrases  ground 
Go  turning  and  returning  round  and  round  ; 
The  sing-song  duly  runs  from  low  to  high ; 
The  chorus'd  groans  at  intervals  reply  ; 
Till  after  forty  minutes'  sweat  and  din, 
Leaving  perhaps  too  little  prayer  within, 
Dear  Brother  Brown,  athletic  babe  of  grace, 
Resumes  his  bench,  and  wipes  his  reeking  face. 

G   2 


84  IRISH    LITERARY   AND   MUSICAL   STUDIES 


JACK  DORAN. 

Jack  was  a  plodding  man,  who  deem'd  it  best 
To  hide  away  the  wisdom  he  possess'd  ; 
Of  scanty  words,  avoiding  all  dispute  ; 
But  much  experience  in  his  mind  had  root  ; 
Most  deferential,  yet  you  might  surprise 
A  secret  scanning  in  the  small  grey  eyes  ; 
Short,  active,  tho'  with  labour's  trudge,  his  legs  ; 
His  knotted  fingers,  like  rude  wooden  pegs, 
Still  firm  of  grip ;  his  breath  was  slow  and  deep  ; 
His  hair  unbleach'd  with  time,  a  rough  black  heap. 
Fond,  of  a  night,  to  calmly  sit  and  smoke, 
While  neighbours  plied  their  argument  or  joke, 
To  each  he  listen'd,  seldom  praised  or  blamed, 
All  party-spirit  prudently  disclaim'd, 
Repeating,  in  his  wise  old  wrinkled  face, 
"  I  never  knew  it  help  a  poor  man's  case  "  ; 
And  when  they  talked  of  "  tyrants  "  Doran  said 
Nothing,  but  suck'd  his  pipe  and  shook  his  head. 


THE  EVICTION. 

The  Sheriff's  painful  duty  must  be  done  ; 
He  begs  for  quiet — and  the  work's  begun. 
The  strong  stand  ready  ;  now  appear  the  rest, 
Girl,  matron,  grandsire,  baby  on  the  breast, 
And  Rosy's  thin  face  on  a  pallet  borne  ; 
A  motley  concourse,  feeble  and  forlorn. 
One  old  man,  tears  upon  his  wrinkled  cheek, 
Stands  trembling  on  a  threshold,  tries  to  speak, 
But,  in  defect  of  any  word  for  this, 
Mutely  upon  the  doorpost  prints  a  kiss, 
Then  passes  out  for  ever. 

Through  the  crowd 

The  children  run  bewilder'd,  wailing  loud  ; 
Where  needed  most,  the  men  combine  their  aid 
And,  last  of  all,  is  Oona  forth  convey'd, 
Reclined  in  her  accustom'd  strawen  chair, 
Her  aged  eyelids  closed,  her  thick  white  hair 
Escaping  from  her  cap  ;  she  feels  a  chill, 
Looks  round  and  murmurs,  then  again  is  still. 


WILLIAM   ALLINGHAM  85 

Poor  consumptive  Rosy  has  shared  in  the  Eviction,  but 
her  poor  friends  come  to  her  rescue. 

Those,  too,  with  less  to  spare,  and  those  with  nought, 

To  this  poor  girl  their  friendly  succour  brought. 

Here  in  a  neighbouring  house,  but  whence  no  noise 

Can  reach  her,  some  well-wishing  girls  and  boys 

Have  clubb'd  their  moneys,  raffling  for  a  shawl ; 

Of  Rose's  other  shreds  the  pawn  has  all. 

Three  simple  pence  entitle  to  a  throw  ; 

Down  on  a  slate  the  names  and  numbers  go  ; 

The  wooden  cubes  mark'd  with  a  red-hot  wire 

(No  better  dice  or  dice-box  they  require) 

In  old  tin  porringer  flung  rattling  fast. 

A  warmer  interest  watches  every  cast  ; 

"  Follie'  your  ban'  !  "     "You're  lucky,  throw  for  me  !  " 

"  More  power  !  "     "Tim  Ryan  has  it — fifty-three  !  " 

Then  silver,  copper,  mix'd,  a  bulky  pound 

Makes  haste  to  Rosy,  feebly  turning  round 

With  grateful  smile  ;  and  back  the  shawl  comes  too, 

The  winner  swearing  'twas  for  her  he  threw. 

THE  UNHAPPY  COUNTRY. 
Derided  in  her  torture  and  her  tears, 
In  sullen  slavery  dragging  hopeless  years  ; 
Of  social  ties  mere  cruel  scourges  made  ; 
A  ban  upon  her  learning  and  her  trade  ; 
Possessions,  rights,  religion,  language,  torn 
And  crushed  by  Law — a  word  to  hate  and  scorn 
For  those  taught  English  in  oppression's  school, 
And  reading  good  words  by  the  witches'  rule  ; 
A  name  for  powerful  wrong,  with  no  appeal  ; 
Since  law  at  every  moment  made  them  feel 
To  live  an  Irishman  on  Irish  ground 
The  sole  unpardonable  crime  was  found. 
Island  of  bitter  memories,  thickly  sown 
From  winding  Boyne  to  Limerick's  treaty-stone, 
Bare  Connaught  Hills  to  Dublin  Castle  wall, 
Green  Wexford  to  the  glens  of  Donegal, 
Through  sad  six  hundred  years  of  hostile  sway, 
From  Strongbow  fierce  to  cunning  Castlereagh  ! 
These  will  not  melt  and  vanish  in  a  day. 
These  can  yet  sting  the  patriot  thoughts  which  turrj 
To  Erin's  past,  and  bid  them  weep  and  burn. 


86  IRISH    LITERARY   AND   MUSICAL   STUDIES 

In  another  respect  Allingham  has  not  been  done  justice 
to  by  Lionel  Johnson.  He  is  spoken  of  as  no  Irish  scholar 
and  therefore  unable  to  draw  inspiration  from  Gaelic  litera- 
ture. Allingham's  essays  distinctly  show  that  he  was  a 
student  of  Gaelic  literature,  even  to  the  extent  of  wading 
through  The  Four  Masters,  and  though  unfortunately  he  did 
not,  until  rather  late  in  life,  try  his  hand  at  a  subject  inspired 
by  Gaelic  literature,  the  one  piece  of  work  of  the  kind  that 
he  attempted  only  makes  us  regret  that  he  had  not  turned 
his  thoughts  in  that  direction  long  before.  I  refer  to  his 
Lady  of  the  Sea.  He  is  also  taxed  with  not  seeking  a  centre 
of  Irish  Literary  Society.  But  what  centre  of  Irish  Literary 
Society  existed  in  England  or  Ireland  until  the  Irish 
Literary  Society  of  London  and  the  National  Literary 
Society  of  Dublin  were  founded  in  the  year  1892,  three 
years  after  Allingham's  death?  In  the  bibliography  of 
Allingham's  works  in  The  Treasury  of  Irish  Poetry,  no  men- 
tion is  made  of  his  prose  writings,  but  had  Johnson  studied 
Allingham's  Varieties  in  Prose  he  would  have  given  him 
credit  for  even  greater  versatility  than  he  allows  him.  I 
give  a  few  brief  selections  from  his  Rambles  by  Patricius 
Walker  as  evidence  of  his  powers  as  a  prose  writer. 
Here  is  his  new-style  description  of  the  river  Erne  : 

After  running  swiftly  half  a  mile  between  bare  slopes,  the  Erne 
finds  its  channel  suddenly  contracted  to  a  narrow  passage  between  two 
ledges  of  limestone,  and  down  into  this  gully  it  sweeps,  racing  in  long 
black  ridges,  leaping  in  amber  curves,  dashed  into  foam  against 
hidden  rocks  in  its  bed,  sending  up  from  the  boiling  depths  great 
gulching  bubbles,  and  whirling  into  crannies  and  corners,  raging 
continually,  with  a  commingled  roaring  and  hissing  as  of  lions  and 
serpents.  After  this  tumultuous  rush  at  "  Kathleen's  Fall,"  the 
Erne,  spreading  wide,  runs  at  a  steadier  pace,  but  still  rapidly,  by 
the  walls  of  Ballyshannon  and  under  the  arches  of  the  old  long  bridge, 
and  300  yards  lower  down  makes  its  final  plunge  into  the  tidal  waters 
of  the  harbour,  over  the  Fall  of  Assaroe,  otherwise  called  the  Salmon 
Leap. 

How  curiously  this  contrasts  with  the  old    style  prose 


WILLIAM   ALLINGHAM  87 

description  of  the  same  fall,  in  an  ancient  Irish  tale,  The 
Banquet  of  Dunagay  and  the  Battle  of  Moira,  translated 
by  John  O'Donovan  (Irish  Archaeological  Society,  1842), 
which  Allingham  himself  calls  attention  to  : 

The  clear-watered,  snowy-foamed,  ever-roaring,  parti-coloured, 
bellowing,  in-salmon-abounding,  beautiful  old  torrent,  whose  cele- 
brated well-known  name  is  the  lofty-great,  clear-landed,  contentious, 
precipitate,  loud-roaring,  headstrong,  rapid,  salmon-ful,  sea-monster- 
ful,  varying,  in-large-fish-abounding,  rapid-flooded,  furious-streamed, 
whirling,  in-seal-abounding,  royal  and  prosperous  cataract  of  Eas 
Ruaidh. 

Here  is  a  very  different  specimen  of  Allingham's  prose : 

Was  it  while  he  was  staying  at  Broadstairs  (it  was  certainly  in  Kent) 
that  I  Patricius  met  Charles  Dickens  one  day  in  Regent  Street  ?  With 
one  sharp  glance,  and  a  quiver  of  the  wide  flexible  nostrils,  "  O, 
lord!"  he  exclaimed,  "how  are  you?"  and  taking  my  arm  walked 
off  at  five  miles  an  hour  towards  a  railway  station.  But  great  as  his 
hurry  was,  he  suddenly  stopped  short  as  quickly,  and  pressed  with  me 
into  the  edge  of  a  crowd  in  the  street  to  see  what  was  happening.  It 
was  only  a  horse  down,  and  Dickens  hurried  me  along  again,  saying, 
"  I'm  a  country  cousin  now,  and  stare  at  everything  when  I  come  up." 
A  trivial  anecdote,  but  it  recalls  the  man.  Nor  was  it  a  trivial  incident 
to  the  worshipping  youth  ;  it  was  almost  as  though  his  arm  were  taken 
by  an  angel  dropping  from  the  sky  ! 

But  much  more  valuable  specimens  of  his  prose  style, 
and  specially  interesting  as  exhibiting  his  own  intellectual 
points  of  view,  are  the  following  sketches,  criticisms,  and 
recollections  of  his  great  compeers,  Tennyson,  Browning, 
Rossetti,  and  Jowett,  extracted  from  Allingham's  Diary, 
edited  by  Mrs.  Allingham  and  Mrs.  Ernest  Radford,  and 
published  by  Macmillan  and  Co.,  in  1907. 

The  first  extract  has  to  me  a  special  interest,  because 
Allingham  once  told  me  himself  how  Tennyson  had 
abandoned  the  theme  of  King  Arthur  when  "  his  mind  was 
in  flower  with  it "  owing  to  a  want  of  warmth  in  the  recep- 
tion by  the  critics  of  his  Morte  a" Arthur,  due,  in  part,  he 
himself  afterwards  felt,  to  his  own  somewhat  apologetic 


88  IRISH   LITERARY   AND   MUSICAL   STUDIES 

verse  preface  to  that  incomparable  poem,  of  which  Froude 
once  said  to  me,  "Alfred  will  not  live  except  in  selection, 
but  the  Morte  cT  Arthur  is  immortal." 

Sunday,  October  i6th,  1881.  T.  told  me  that  he  had  planned  out 
his  Arthuriad,  and  could  have  written  it  all  off  without  any  trouble. 
But  in  1842  he  published,  with  other  poems,  the  Morte  (? Arthur, 
which  was  one  book  of  his  Epic  (though  not  really  the  eleventh),  and 
the  review  in  the  Quarterly  disheartened  him,  so  that  he  put  the 
scheme  aside.  He  afterwards  took  it  up  again,  but  not  as  with  the 
first  inspiration.  This  unlucky  article  in  the  Quarterly  was  written  by 
John  Sterling,  who  was  then  thirty-six  years  old,  just  three  years  older 
than  Tennyson.  It  may  be  interesting  now  to  read  what  it  said  of  the 
Morte  <f  Arthur:  "The  first  poem  in  the  second  volume  seems  to 
us  less  costly  jewel  work,  with  fewer  of  the  broad  flashes  of  passionate 
imagery,  than  some  others,  and  not  compensating  for  this  inferiority  by 
any  stronger  human  interest.  The  miraculous  legend  of  Excalibur 
does  not  come  very  near  to  us,  and  as  reproduced  by  any  modern 
writer  must  be  a  mere  ingenious  exercise  of  fancy.  The  poem,  how- 
ever, is  full  of  distinct  and  striking  description,  perfectly  expressed, 
and  a  tone  of  mild  dignified  sweetness  attracts,  though  it  hardly  avails 
to  enchant  us." 

This,  it  will  be  observed,  chimes  in  with  the  doubts  expressed  by 
the  poet  himself  in  the  lines  written  by  way  of  prologue.  Blame  or 
doubt  in  regard  to  his  own  writings  always  weighed  more  with 
Tennyson  than  praise.  He  often  said  that  he  forgot  praise  and 
remembered  all  censure. 

Sterling's  review,  meant  to  be  friendly,  was  a  thin,  pretentious 
piece,  and  of  no  value  whatever  ;  a  pity  it  should  have  chanced  to 
prove  so  miseffectual ! 

Tuesday,  February  l8th,  1868.  Browning's  "Sludge,"  etc. 
Mem. — There  is  too  often  a  want  of  solid  basis  for  Robert  Browning's 
brilliant  and  astounding  cleverness.  A  Blot  in  the  'Scutcheon  is 
solid.  How  try  to  account  for  Browning's  twists  and  turns?  I 
cannot.  He  has  been  and  still  is  very  dear  to  me.  But  I  can  no 
longer  commit  myself  to  his  hands  in  faith  and  trust.  Neither  can  I 
allow  the  faintest  shadow  of  a  suspicion  to  dwell  in  my  mind  that  his 
genius  may  have  a  leaven  of  quackery.  Yet,  alas  !  he  is  not  solid — 
which  is  a  very  different  thing  from  prosaic.  A  Midsummer  Nighfs 
Dream  is  as  solid  as  anything  in  literature  ;  has  imaginative  coherency 
and  consistency  in  perfection.  Looking  at  forms  of  poetic  expression, 
there  is  not  a  single  utterance  in  Shakespeare,  or  of  Dante  as  far  as  I 
know,  enigmatic  in  the  same  sense  as  so  many  of  Browning's  are.  If 


WILLIAM   ALLINGHAM  89 

you  suspect,  and  sometimes  find  out,  that  riddles  presented  to  you  with 
Sphinxian  solemnity  have  no  answers  that  really  fit  them,  your  curiosity 
is  apt  to  fall  towards  freezing  point,  if  not  below  it.  Yet  I  always  end 
by  striking  my  breast  in  penitential  mood  and  crying  out,  "O  rich 
mind  !  wonderful  Poet  !  strange  great  man  !  " 

I  recall  an  interesting  talk  with  Professor  Jowett  at  Freshwater, 
one  night  that  I  walked  with  him  from  Tennyson's  to  his  lodging  at 
the  Terrace.  The  conversation  turned  to  the  subject  of  conventionali- 
ties, and  I  urged  how  lamentable  it  was  to  see  men,  and  especially 
distinguished  men,  accepting  in  public,  or  even  actively  supporting 
ideas  which  they  abjured  in  their  own  minds.  This  was  my  hobby, 
and  I  rode  it  at  a  pace  that  the  Professor  was  probably  little  accustomed 
to,  yet  he  listened  and  answered  not  only  with  patience  but  apparent 
interest,  and  when  we  arrived  at  his  door  invited  me,  somewhat  to  my 
surprise,  to  come  in  and  continue  the  conversation,  I  remember,  in  a 
room  dimly  lighted  with  one  candle.  He  seemed  to  agree  with  me  in 
the  main,  but  argued  to  the  effect  that  by  an  open  and  unguarded  non- 
conformity a  man  might  ruin  his  career  and  lose  all  influence  and 
authority.  I  said  in  my  usual  impulsive  style  :  "Oh,  he  would  find 
the  apparent  obstacles  to  be  only  shadows  on  his  road."  To  which 

J replied  gently,  but  with  a  tone  of  conviction,  "  I  fear  he  would 

find  them  very  real." 

He  is  a  soft,  smooth,  round  man,  with  fat  soft  hands  and  a  very 
gentle  voice  and  manner,  but  with  no  weakness  of  will  or  lack  of 
perseverance.  He  is  extremely  cautious,  but  not  in  the  least  cowardly, 
can  quietly  make  his  way,  doubtless,  into  very  hard  substances,  as 
some  very  soft  creatures  do  (speaking  without  disparagement).  J. 
indeed  has  publicly  shown  great  frankness,  for  an  Oxford  Don,  and 
will  be  a  reformer  ab  infra. 

I  know  full  well  how  too  impatient  I  always  am,  how  too  lacking 
in  savoir  faire.  Yet  I  don't  think  I  was  wrong  to  speak  freely  to  him, 
for  once.  Nay,  I  don't  see  how  any  thinking  man  can  be  at  perfect 
peace  with  himself  while  his  public  conduct  and  private  belief  are  not 
in  agreement.  I  do  not  know  one  English  writer  now  living  who  is 
consistent.  Emerson  is  :  but  supposing  he  were  an  Englishman  ? — an 
absurd  supposition,  for  Emerson  is  entirely  an  American  product. 

Thursday,  September  ipth,  1867.  Rossetti  and  I  look  round  the 
furniture  brokers  ;  he  buys  an  old  mirror  and  several  other  things  "  for 
a  song,"  but  they  will  have  to  be  done  up  "  otherwise  you  fill  your 
house  with  dinginess."  Then  a  walk.  R.  walks  very  characteristi- 
cally, with  a  peculiar  lounging  gait,  often  trailing  the  point  of  his 
umbrella  on  the  ground,  but  still  obstinately  pushing  on  and  making 
way,  he  humming  the  while  with  closed  teeth,  in  the  intervals  of  talk, 


90  IRISH    LITERARY   AND   MUSICAL   STUDIES 

not  a  tune  or  anything  like  one,  but  what  sounds  like  a  sotto  voce  note 
of  defiance  to  the  universe.     Then  suddenly  he  will  fling  himself  down 
somewhere  and  refuse  to  stir  an  inch  further.     His  favourite  attitude — 
on  his  back,  one  knee  raised,  hands  behind  head.     On  a  sofa  he  often, 
too,  curls  himself  up  like  a  cat.      He  very  seldom  takes  particular 
notice  of  anything  as  he  goes,  and  cares  nothing  about  natural  history 
or   science  in  any  form  or  degree.     It  is  plain  that  the  simple,  the 
natural,   the  naive  are  merely  insipid  in  his   mouth  ;    he  must   have 
strong   savours,    in   art,    in    literature,  and    in   life.     Colours,   forms, 
sensations  are  required  to  be  pungent,  mordant.     In  poetry  he  desires 
spasmodic  passion,  and  emphatic,  partly  archaic,  diction.     He  cannot 
endure  Wordsworth  any  more   than  I  can  S.      He  sees  nothing  in 
Lovelace's  "Tell  me  not,  Sweet,  I  am  Unkind."     In  foreign  poetry 
he  is  drawn  to  Dante  by  inheritance  (Milton,  by  the  way,  he  dislikes)  ; 
in  France  he  is  interested  by  Villon  and  some  others  of  the  old  lyric 
writers ;  in  Germany  by  nobody.    To  Greek  literature  he  seems  to  owe 
nothing,  nor  to  Greek  art  directly.     In  Latin  poetry  he  has  turned  to 
one   or   two   things   of  Catullus  for   sake   of  the   subjects.      English 
imaginative  literature — poems  and  tales,  here  lies  his  pabulum  :  Shake- 
speare,   the   old    ballads,    Blake,    Keats,    Shelley,    Browning,    Mrs. 
Browning,  Tennyson,  Poe  being  first  favourites,  and  now  Swinburne. 
Wuthering    Heights    is    a    Koh-i-noor    among    novels,    Sidonia    the 
Sorceress  "a  stunner."     Any  writing  that  with  the  least  competency 
assumes  an  imaginative  form,  or  any  criticism  on  the  like,  attracts  his 
attention  more  or  less ;    and  he  has  discovered  in  obscurity,  and  in 
some  cases  helped  to  rescue  from  it,  at  least  in  his  own  circle,  various 
unlucky  books ;   those,  for   example,  of  Ebenezer  Jones  and  Wells, 
authors    of  Joseph    and    His    Brethren    and    Stories    after    Nature, 
About   these    and    other    matters    Rossetti    is    chivalrously   bold   in 
announcing   and   defending   his   opinions,    and    he   has   the   valuable 
quality  of  knowing  what  he  likes  and  sticking  to  it.     In  painting,  the 
early  Italians  with  their  quaintness  and  strong   rich   colouring   have 
magnetised  him.     In  sculpture,  he  only  cares  for  picturesque  and  gro- 
tesque qualities ;  and  of  architecture;  as  such,  takes,  I  think,  no  notice 
at  all. 

The  two  Aeolian  Harps,  one  of  which  Tennyson  read 
aloud  with  deep  appreciation  to  its  author,  Would  I  knew, 
St.  Margaret's  ETC,  The  GirFs  Lamentation,  The  Sailor — 
the  last  two  described  as  "  most  admirable  " — and  The  Dream 
were  Rossetti's  favourites  in  Allingham's  first  volume.  His 
opinion  of  the  one  long  poem  in  it,  The  Music  Master,  is 


WILLIAM   ALLINGHAM  QJ 

mixed,  his  adverse  criticism  being  that  it  is  not  a  strong 
enough  narrative  poem  to  form  the  piece  de  resistance  in  a 
first  volume  of  poems,  and  that  it  chiefly  awakens  con- 
templation like  a  walk  on  a  fine  day  with  a  churchyard  in  it, 
instead  of  rousing  one  like  part  of  one's  own  life  and  leaving 
one  to  walk  it  off  as  one  might  live  it  off;  but  he  praises 
the  poem  for  its  many  artistic  merits. 

I  have  studied  the  poem  at  three  times  of  my  life — five 
and  twenty  years  ago,  fifteen  years  ago,  and  in  preparation 
for  this  study.  First  I  read  it  with  unmixed  pleasure,  then 
with  considerable  disappointment,  lastly  with  mixed  feelings, 
my  artistic  and  dramatic  instincts  somewhat  pitted  against 
each  other.  For  the  dramatic  interest  drags  at  Gerald's 
irresolute  attitude  and  inarticulate  farewell  to  Mollie,  and 
it  is  hard  to  forgive  him  for  the  unexplained  silence  that 
consumed  her  very  life.  "  The  only  part,"  writes  Rossetti, 
"  where  I  remember  being  much  affected  was  at  the  old 
woman's  narrative  of  Mollie's  gradual  decline."  The 
interest  certainly  revives  here,  but  not  convincingly,  and 
there  is  a  lack  of  the  romantically  passionate  which,  as 
Rossetti  points  out,  Keats  satisfies  us  with  in  his  dramatic 
narratives.  But  the  poem  so  abounds  with  artistic  beauties, 
both  of  personal  and  natural  description,  that  we  accept  it 
thankfully  on  these  grounds  alone,  pace  Coventry  Patmore, 
\\ho  thought  it  perfect  from  every  point  of  view.  It  has, 
moreover,  the  note  of  distinction.  It  was  the  first  serious 
poem  upon  a  musical  theme,  as  its  author  claims. 

Tacitly  Allingham  has  taken  Rossetti's  advice,  and  made 
The  Music  Master  second  in  a  series  of  four  stories  of  Irish 
life,  old  world  and  modern,  in  his  final  collection  of  Irish 
poems,  where  its  tranquil,  calm  and  poignant  restraint 
contrasts  happily  with  the  mystery  and  romance  of  The  Lady 
of  the  Sea  and  the  Abbot  of  Inisf alien ,  and  the  uncanny 
power  and  gloom  of  the  Goblin  Child  and  a  Stormy  Night. 

Throughout  his  letters  to  Allingham  we  find  Rossetti 
seeking  and  generally  accepting  his  friends'  opinions  of  his 


92  IRISH    LITERARY   AND    MUSICAL   STUDIES 

poems,  and  glorifying,  by  recitation  amongst  his  friends, 
and  approving  or  criticising,  Allingham's,  with  a  combined 
delicacy  and  frankness  which  it  does  one  good  to  dwell 
upon.  This  was  the  period  of  Allingham's  Day  and  Night 
Songs,  and  Lawrence  Bloomfield  and  Nightingale  Valley,  an 
anthology  of  lyrics  and  short  poems.  But  alas !  while 
Allingham  preserved  Rossetti's  critical  letters,  his  own  to 
Rossetti  perished,  for  it  is  chronicled  that  the  great  painter 
was  in  the  habit  from  time  to  time  of  clearing  out  his 
drawers  by  the  simple  method  of  destroying  all  their 
accumulations. 

The  ballad  of  Elfin  Mere,  "one  of  the  very  few  really 
fine  things  of  the  kind  written  in  our  day,"  as  Rossetti 
characterised  it,  was  illustrated  by  that  painter  in  the  Day 
and  Night  Songs. 

Here  is,  in  brief,  the  story  of  The  Lady  of  the  Sea. 

Brother  of  Diarmid,  king  of  West  lerne,  Dalchamar 
becomes  the  apt  pupil  of  the  Arch  poet  Conn : 

Who  taught  the  Prince  of  Fairy  folk 
Who  dwell  within  the  hollow  hills, 
In  founts  of  rivers  and  of  rills, 
In  caves  and  woods  and  some  that  be 
Underneath  the  cold  green  sea  ; 
The  spells  they  cast  on  mortal  men, 
And  spells  to  master  them  again. 

Therefore  Dalchamar,  to  his  brother's  dread,  turns  his 
mind  to  some  love  the  wide  earth  cannot  give  and  lives 
absorbed  in  dreams  thereof.  Till,  as  with  the  return  of 
spring,  he  paddles  his  coracle  in  a  rocky  cove  and  up  a 
lonely  little  strand  : 

What  spies  he  on  the  tawny  sand  ? 
A  cold  sea-jelly,  cast  away 
By  fling  of  ebbing  water  ?  nay  ! 
A  little  Cap  of  changeful  sheen, 
A  seamless  Cap  of  rippled  green, 
Mingling  with  purple,  like  the  hue 
Of  ocean  weeds. 


WILLIAM    ALLINGHAM  93 

He  stoop'd  ;  its  touch 
Like  thinnest  lightning  ran  him  through 
With  blissful  shiver,  sharp  and  new  ! 
What  might  it  mean  ?     For  never  such 
A  chance  had  come  to  Dalchamar  ; 
He  felt  as  when,  in  dream,  a  star 
Flew  to  him,  bird-like  from  the  sky. 

But  then  he  heard  a  sad  low  cry, 
And,  turning,  saw  five  steps  away — 
Was  it  a  woman  ? — strange  and  bright, 
With  long  loose  hair,  and  her  body  fair, 
Shimmering  as  with  watery  light  ; 
For  nothing  save  a  luminous  mist 
Of  tender  beryl  and  amethyst 
Over  the  living  smoothness  lay, 
Statue-firm  from  head  to  feet, — 
A  breathing  Woman,  soft  and  sweet, 
And  yet  not  earthly. 

So  she  stood 

One  marvellous  moment  in  his  sight ; 
Then,  lapsing  to  another  mood, 
Her  mouth's  infantine  loveliness 
Trembling  pleaded  in  sore  distress  ; 
Her  wide  blue  eyes  with  great  affright 
Were  fill'd  ;  two  slender  hands  she  press'd 
Against  the  roundlings  of  her  breast, 
Then  with  a  fond  face  full  of  fears 
She  held  them  forth,  and  heavy  tears 
Brimm'd  in  silence  and  overflow'd. 

He,  doubting  much  what  this  might  be, 
Watched  her. 

Swiftly  pointed  she ; 
Utter'd  some  sound  of  foreign  speech  ; 
But  Dalchamar  held  out  of  reach 
The  Cap,  behind-back, — and  so  each 
Regarded  other. 

Then  she  flung 

Her  arms  aloft, — stood  straight, — her  wide 
Eyes  gazed  on  his,  and  into  him  ; 
And  she  began  a  solemn  song, 
Of  words  uncouth,  slow  up  and  down  ; 


94  IRISH   LITERARY   AND   MUSICAL   STUDIES 

A  song  that  deepen'd  as  she  sung, 

That  soon  was  loud  and  swift  and  strong 

Like  the  rising  of  a  tide, 

With  power  to  seize  and  drench  and  drown 

The  senses, — till  his  sight  grew  dim, 

A  torpor  crept  on  every  limb. 

What  could  he  do  ? — an  ocean-spell 

Was  on  him. 

But  old  wisdom  rush'd 
Into  his  mind,  and  with  a  start, 
One  gasp  of  breath,  one  leap  of  heart, 
He  pluck'd  his  dagger  from  its  sheath, 
Held  forth  the  little  Cap  beneath 
Its  glittering  point.     The  song  was  hushed, 
Prone  on  the  yellow  sand  she  fell. 

He  kneels,  he  takes  her  hands,  with  gentle, 
Tender,  passionate  words — in  vain  ; 
Then  with  a  heart  of  love  and  pain 
Wraps  her  in  his  crimson  mantle, 
Lifts  her,  lays  her  down  with  care, 
As  she  a  one-year  infant  were, 
Within  his  woven  coracle, 
And  o'er  the  smooth  sea  guides  it  well, 
And  bears  her  up  the  rocky  path, 
And  through  the  circle  of  the  rath, 
To  Banva's  bower,  his  sister  dear. 
There,  half  in  pity,  half  in  fear, 
The  women  tend  her,  till  she  sighs 
And  opens  wide  her  wondrous  eyes. 

She  is  a  Sea  Maid,  Moruach  (Merrow)  of  Irish  tradition 
and  wears  a  Connken  Druith — a  magical  little  cap  on 
which  depends  her  power  of  living  under  water.  The  Sea 
Maid  becomes  Dalchamar's  bride,  but  in  the  end  leaves  her 
mortal  lover  and  children  to  return  to  the  ocean  depths, 
just  as  Matthew  Arnold's  Margaret  is  constrained  to  forsake 
the  Neckan  and  her  children  of  the  sea. 

Allingham  has  written  two  remarkable  poems  on  the 
supernatural,  one  upon  an  Irish,  the  other  upon  an  English 
subject,  namely,  The  Goblin  Child  of  Belashanny  and  Squire 


WILLIAM   ALLINGHAM  95 

Curtis.  This  is  the  legend  of  The  Goblin  Child  of  Bela- 
shanny.  "  In  the  large  old  house  by  the  bridge,  once  a 
barrack,  the  room  is  still  shown  in  which  Robert  Stewart, 
afterwards  Lord  Castlereagh,  is  said  to  have  seen  a  ghost, 
which  made  a  lasting  impression  on  his  mind.  From  early 
childhood  Allingham  heard  as  one  of  the  local  traditions 
that  Castlereagh,  after  marching  in  with  his  regiment  into 
Ballyshannon,  saw  a  ghost  in  the  barracks,  and  there  is  no 
reason  to  doubt  that  this  is  the  ghost  described  in  Lock- 
hart's  Life  of  Scoff,  chapter  Ivi.  Thomas  Moore  sets  down 
in  his  diary  (Abbotsford,  October  2oth,  1835):  'Scott  said 
the  only  two  men  who  had  ever  told  him  that  they  had 
actually  seen  a  ghost  afterwards  put  an  end  to  themselves ; 
one  was  Lord  Castlereagh,  who  had  himself  mentioned  to 
Scott  his  seeing  The  Radiant  Boy.  It  was  one  night  when 
he  was  in  barracks  and  the  face  brightened  gradually 
out  of  the  fire-place  and  approached  him.  Lord  Castlereagh 
stepped  forward  to  it,  and  it  receded  again,  and  faded  into 
the  same  place.  It  was  the  Duke  of  Wellington  made  Lord 
Castlereagh  tell  the  story  to  Sir  Walter,  and  Lord  Castle- 
reagh told  it  without  hesitation  and  as  if  believing  in  it 
implicitly.' " 

But  whilst  Allingham  had  the  warm  suffrages  of  famous 
men  and  women  of  letters — the  elect  of  various  schools — 
Dickens  and  Thackeray,  Patmore  and  Rossetti,  Ruskin  and 
George  Eliot,  Leigh  Hunt,  Tennyson  and  Browning — it  is 
impossible  to  avoid  the  conclusion  that  his  poems  did  not 
meet  with  the  general  recognitiont  that  hey  deserved,  while 
such  obviously  unfinished  work  as  The  Songs  of  Two  Worlds 
and  such  charming  but  comparatively  slight  performances 
as  the  lyrics  of  the  author  of  Songs  of  Seven  were  widely  read. 
No  doubt  Allingham  was  clever  enough  to  have  tickled  the 
taste  of  the  English  middle-class  tens  of  thousands  by  oleo- 
graphs of  the  order  of  The  Light  of  Asia  or  sham  antiques 
of  the  type  of  The  Epic  of  Hades.  But  he  was  above  such 
a  prostitution  of  his  powers,  even  though  he  had  by  his 


96  IRISH    LITERARY   AND    MUSICAL    STUDIES 

independence  to  suffer  "fools"  sadly — young  lions,  I  should 
say,  or  rather  young  jackasses  in  critical  lions'  skins  who 
brayed  out  of  The  Saturday  Review — "  New  Poems  by  William 
Allingham,  and  who  is  William  Allingham  ? "  William 
Allingham  !  over  whose  Day  and  Night  songs  Ruskin  went 
into  raptures,  whom  Rossetti  and  Tennyson  recited  and 
Emerson  quoted  at  length  in  the  course  of  a  famous  oration. 

But,  if  discouraged,  the  poet  was  in  no  sense  daunted. 
With  the  doggedness  that  ran  in  his  northern  blood  he 
thought  and  wrote  on. 

In  Flower  Pieces  he  exercised  his  fancy  upon  the  lovely 
nurslings  of  garden  and  field,  while  in  Thought  and  Word  he 
attempts,  as  he  says  in  his  dedication  to  his  children,  "  to 
put  into  words  some  faint  hint  of  the  highest  truths."  Here 
he  tilts  against  Sacerdotalism  and  Un-Christian  Science  with 
equal  ardour,  and  in  An  Evil  May  Day  shows  the  horror  of 
the  loss  of  belief  and  the  joy  of  its  recovery,  released  from 
the  letter  which  kills,  and  full  of  the  spirit  which  gives  life ; 
whilst  in  his  Ne^us  from  Pannonia  he  conducts  a  noble 
dialogue  on  the  death  and  motive  philosophy  of  the  great 
Emperor  Marcus  Aurelius. 

Allingham's  penultimate  volume,  Life  and  Phantasy ',  is 
prefaced  by  an  interesting  note  of  his  plan  of  poetical  work : 
"  There  are  various  modes  of  producing  what  a  man  is  able 
to  produce,  and  in  my  case  I  have,  as  it  were,  gone  on 
knitting,  in  the  midst  of  other  occupations,  a  little  web  of 
poetry  for  myself  and  those  near  me  out  of  designs  sug- 
gested by  the  influences  of  the  passing  hours,  have  looked 
back  at  these  from  time  to  time,  reconsidered,  retouched, 
omitted,  added  new  things  to  old." 

By  this  process  his  "  six  volumes  have  taken  substance 
and  shape,"  and  thus  they  should  "  show  something  of  the 
quality  of  homogeneity,  so  far  as  this  may  belong  to  a  man's 
progress  through  successive  stages  of  life  and  their  various 
moods." 

His   attitude  to   his  art  is   to  expound   the  miracle  of 


WILLIAM    ALLINGHAM  97 

universal  beauty,  which,  though  linked  with  evil,  is  subject 
to  a  divine  law. 

I  have  marked  Prince  Brightkin  as  a  delightful  fairy 
pastoral  for  children's  theatricals,  and  George  and  the 
School-fellows  as  one  of  the  most  striking  poems  in  this 
volume,  and  was  not  surprised  to  find  in  a  note  at  the  end 
of  it  this  letter : 

TAVISTOCK  HOUSE, 
Monday,  Ninth  November,  1857. 

My  dear  Sir, — I  am  happy  to  retain  the  poem,  which  is  mournfully 
true  and  has  moved  me  very  much.  You  shall  have  a  proof  without 
fail. 

Faithfully  yours, 

CHARLES  DICKENS. 

His  new  Bona  Dea  is  an  address  to  Mother  Nature — 
the  Bride  of  God — his  childhood's  rapture,  his  manhood's 
guard  against  a  despair,  which,  however,  for  a  time  broke 
through  her  embrace  and  his  ultimate  consoler  and  spirit- 
ualiser. 

In  both  Thought  and  Word  and  Life  and  Phantasy 
begins  that  series  of  epitaphs,  aphorisms  and  obiter  dicta 
of  all  kinds  of  which  his  final  volume,  Blackberries,  is 
compounded : 

These  berries  swell  with  autumn's  power  : 
Some  are  red  and  green  and  sour, 
Some  are  black  and  juicy  to  bite, 
Some  have  a  maggot,  some  a  blight. 

Here  a  new  quality  of  our  versatile  author  is  apparent 
— satire,  quizzical,  ironical,  sarcastic,  sardonic,  the  possession 
of  which  is  traditionally  attributed  to  the  Irish  Bard,  and 
whose  exercise  owing  to  its  supposed  maleficent  effects  he 
kept  like  a  rod  in  pickle  for  his  detractors. 

We  do  not  now  believe  in  this  power  of  rhyming 
human  rats  to  death,  however  we  might  rejoice  at  such  a 
form  of  euthanasia.  But  are  there  not  still  certain  letter- 
boxes into  which  the  dropping  of  such  epigrams  as  follow, 


98  IRISH   LITERARY   AND   MUSICAL   STUDIES 

upon  their  owners'  well-advertised  birthdays,  might  not  have 
a  searching  effect  ?  I  will  leave  my  readers  to  address  the 
envelopes. 

"  Man's  a  machine  ?  "  Well,  if  we  ever  can 
Construct  one,  bit  by  bit,  on  some  new  plan, 
Be  sure  'twill  be,  a  scientific  man. 

/  believe  without  bother  in  This,  That  and  T'other  ; 

Whatever  is  current,  no  matter, 
/believe  in  success,  and  in  comfort  no  less  ; 

/  believe  all  the  rest  is  but  patter. 

Dorr  through  his  life  has  been  content  to  wait 
In  lazy  hopes  of  doing  something  great ; 
In  practice  null,  in  theory  surprising, 
Dorr  sleeps  till  noon  to  dream  of  early  rising. 

Arr  does  write  books,  and,  to  exalt  his  own, 
On  principle  runs  every  other's  down. 

Scratch  also  writes  ;  and  if  you  can  and  do 

Praise  Scratch,  then  Scratch  will  honestly  praise  you. 

MAXIMILIAN  GUSHER. 

A  torrent  of  abuse,  or  praise, 
What  matters  which  ?  I'll  pour, 
Let  folk  but  on  the  sparkle  gaze, 
And  listen  to  the  roar. 

With  wrappings  and  knottings  your  meaning  you  hide  ; 
Good  sooth,  is  there  always  a  meaning  inside  ? 

I  dreamt  I  went  to  hell  one  night. 
The  little  devils  were  impolite  ; 
But  Satan  with  the  sweetest  air 
Bowed  me  into  a  red-hot  chair. 

Finally,  here  is  Allingham's — 

ADVICE  TO  A  YOUNG  POET. 
You're  a  true  Poet  :  but,  my  dear, 
If  you  would  hold  the  public  ear, 
Remember  to  be,  NOT  TOO  CLEAR. 
Be  strange,  be  verbally  intense  ; 


WILLIAM   ALLINGHAM  99 

WORDS  matter  ten  times  more  than  sense : 

In  clear  streams,  under  sunny  skies, 

The  fish  you  angle  for  won't  rise  ; 

In  turbid  water,  cloudy  weather, 

They'll  rush  to  you  by  shoals  together. 

"  Ignotum  pro  mirifico  "  ; 

The  least  part  of  your  meaning  show  ; 

Your  readers  must  not  understand 

Too  well  ;  the  mist-wrapt  hill  looks  grand, 

The  placid  noonday  mountain  small. 

Speak  plainly  and  folk  say — "  Is  that  all  ?  " 

Speak  riddles—1''  What  is  here  ?  "     They  read 

And  re-read,  many  times  indeed  ; 

"  How  fine  !  how  strange  !  how  deep  !  how  new  ! 

Here's  my  opinion  ;  what  say  you  ? 

It  may  be  this,  it  might  be  that ; 

Who  can  be  certain  what  he's  at, 

This  necromancer  ?"     While  they  talk 

You  swing  your  solemn  cloak  and  stalk 

Or  else  look  on  with  smile  urbane, 

"  Well  done,  my  children, — guess  again  !  " 

O  let  me  not  advise  in  vain, 

Be  what  you  will,  but  don't  be  plain  ! 

Thus  writing,  gardening,  and  musing  afield  with  good 
friends  from  the  highest  to  the  humblest,  with  many  interests 
in  a  life  of  high  thinking  and  plain  living,  and  above  all,  the 
happiest  of  homes  through  the  devoted  companionship  of 
his  wife  and  children,  Allingham's  days  went  by. 

He  wrote  Ashby  Manor,  a  telling  poetical  drama  of 
Puritan  and  Royalist  times  (as  Allingham  tells  us),  which  a 
London  manager  highly  praised,  regretting,  however,  that 
it  was  not  exactly  suited  to  his  company,  but  asking  for 
another  drama  from  the  same  hand.  Some  months  later 
the  manager  produced  a  play  which  was  without  doubt  a 
clumsy  parody  of  Ashby  Manor,  in  time,  story,  incidents 
and  characters,  with  senseless  melodramatic  additions  and 
an  entirely  irrelevant  fifth  act. 

The  manager,  on  this  being  pointed  out  to  him,  asserted 
that  he  had  never  read  a  page  of  Ashby  Manor,  and  scarcely 


IOO  IRISH    LITERARY    AND    MUSICAL   STUDIES 

recollected  anything  about  it.  His  bold  enterprise,  adds 
Allingham,  deservedly  proved  a  failure.  He  received 
similar  treatment  when  his  one-act  prose  comedy,  Hopwood 
dv  Co.,  was  shown  to  another  stage  shark,  who  swallowed 
his  ideas  whole  but  returned  the  play.  This  piece  might 
well  be  undertaken  by  the  Irish  Literary  Society  with  some 
modification  of  the  part  of  the  Irish  Dea  ex  machina.  Mrs. 
Allingham  illustrated  Ashby  Manor  and  other  of  her 
husband's  works  with  the  rarest  charm. 

When  next  we  have  to  think  of  Christmas  presents,  I 
cannot  conceive  of  a  more  enjoyable  one  for  children, 
young  and  growing  up,  than  Allingham 's  Rhymes  for  the 
Young  Folk,  with  delightful  pictures  by  Mrs.  Allingham, 
Kate  Greenaway,  Caroline  Paterson  and  Harry  Furniss. 
Another  Allingham  souvenir  is  a  selection  from  his  poems, 
which,  by  the  consent  of  Mrs.  Allingham,  Mr.  VV.  B.  Yeats  has 
made,  and  which  has  been  issued  from  his  sister's  beauti- 
ful Cuala  Press.  To  these  Allingham  souvenirs  may  now 
be  added  the  new  volume  of  Messrs.  Macmillan's  Golden 
Treasury,  i.e.,  the  selections  from  William  Allingham's 
poetry,  by  his  wife,  Helen  Allingham. 


EARLY   IRISH    RELIGIOUS    POETRY 

(  With  original  translations') 

DR.  DOUGLAS  HYDE,  who  has  done  much  to  preserve  the 
Gaelic  religious  poetry  of  Connaught,  and  who  has  turned 
so  much  of  it  into  beautiful  English  verse,  first  drew  my 
serious  attention  to  the  study  of  sacred  poetry  in  the  Irish 
language. 

I  then  read,  with  much  pleasure,  Dr.  Alexander  Car- 
michael's  fine  prose  versions  of  Hebridean  prayer  poems 
and  charms  in  his  delightful  Carmina  Gadelica,  and,  of 
course,  I  had  been  happily  familiar,  from  the  time  of  their 
publication,  with  Dr.  Sigerson's  verse  renderings  of  Irish 
Gaelic  poems  in  his  Bards  of  the  Gael  and  Gall. 

A  German  historian's  opinion,  quoted  by  Dr.  Sigerson, 
is  that  the  civilisation  of  Europe  belonged  to  Ireland  for 
three  centuries,  from  the  fifth  to  the  ninth,  and  that  an 
Irish  influence  upon  Latin  verse  first  made  itself  manifest 
in  the  works  ofSedulius  (Shiel)  and  especially  in  his  Carmen 
Paschale,  the  earliest  Christian  epic  of  importance.  True, 
the  poet's  Irish .  nationality  has  been  questioned  by  the 
German  critic  Huemer,  but  Dr.  Sigerson  applies  Gaelic 
verse  tests  which  afford  the  strongest  internal  evidence 
that  he  was  an  Irish  writer. 

Zeuss  calls  attention  to  Irish  rhymes  in  the  verses  in 
praise  of  St.  Patrick  by  his  nephew,  St.  Secundinus,  also  a 
fifth  century  writer,  and  Dr.  Sigerson  enforces  this  view  by 
even  more  distinct  proofs  of  the  influence  of  the  Bardic 
schools  upon  these  verses  and  upon  his  "  Sancti,  Venite," 
the  celebrated  post-communion  hymn,  sung,  according  to 
tradition,  by  angels  in  the  Saint's  church  at  Bangor. 


102  IRISH    LITERARY   AND   MUSICAL   STUDIES 

Then,  in  the  sixth  century,  we  have,  in  St.  Columkille 
himself,  an  author  of  both  Gaelic  and  Latin  sacred  verse, 
one  who  moreover  Gaelicised  Latin  verse,  as  in  his  Altus 
Prosator,  composed  in  trochaic  tetrameters.  But,  as  a 
writer  in  the  ancient  Lebor  Breac  points  out — distinguishing 
between  artificial  rhythm,  or  that  of  quantity,  and  that  of 
accent  in  the  syllables  of  the  quatrain  and  half-quatrain — 
this  hymn  is  composed  in  the  latter  and  popular  Irish 
rhythm.  St.  Columkille  also  uses  trisyllabic  and  even  four- 
syllabled,  as  well  as  internal  rhymes  and  assonances  in  his 
Latin  verse — all  Gaelic  verse  peculiarities. 

Columbanus,  twenty  years  later,  whilst  composing  in 
classical  metres  and  pure  Latin,  also  introduced  Irish 
alliteration  and  rhyme ;  and  St.  Ultan's  seventh  century 
Latin  hymn  in  honour  of  St.  Brigit  abounds  in  Irish-Gaelic 
verse  characteristics,  as  do  the  Latin  hymns  of  the  seventh 
century  poet  saints,  Cummain  and  Colman. 

In  the  eighth  century,  according  to  Dr.  Sigerson,  St. 
Cucuimne,  who  died  A.D.  742,  "employed  both  vowel  and 
consonant  rhyme,  with  alliteration,  in  a  manner  most  dear 
to  the  Gaelic  bards  of  Munster  a  thousand  years  ago.  His 
contemporary,  St.  CEngus,  son  of  Tipraite,  makes  use  of 
woven  rhyme  with  like  liberality  in  his  hymn  to  St.  Martin. 
As  written,  the  lines  are  : 

Martinus  minis  ore  laudavit  deum, 
Puro  corde  cantavit  atque  amavit  cum. 

Here  we   see   the  rhymes,  but   not   the   system,  until  we 
arrange  the  lines  as  a  Gaelic  quatrain  : 

Martinus  Mirus  more 
Ore  laudavit  deum, 
Puro  Corde  Cantavit 
Atque  amavit  euna." 

The  old  Spanish  redondcllas  are  so  obviously  akin  in 
their  imperfect  rhyming  to  the  Irish  quatrains  that  it  is 
amusing  to  find  Ticknor  claiming  them  as  an  original  con- 


EARLY    IRISH   RELIGIOUS   POETRY  103 

tribution  to  Spanish  poetical  culture,  as  Dr.  Sigerson  points 
out.  Of  course  they  came  into  Spain  out  of  Ireland.  For 
the  fact  was  that  Ireland  was  at  this  time  not  only  "  The 
Island  of  the  Saints,"  but  that  of  the  scholars  and  students 
as  well — an  International  University,  in  fine,  where  all 
foreigners,  Continental  and  British,  were  not  only  received 
with  the  warmest  of  welcomes,  but  actually  given  a  free 
education  in  all  the  learning  of  the  time,  free  living  and 
free  lodging,  as  The  Venerable  Bede  expressly  tells  us. 
What  a  comment  this  upon  the  tardiness  with  which  Ireland 
has  secured  a  latter  day  National  University  of  her  own 
from  her  Anglo-Saxon  rulers,  and  in  how  different  a  spirit 
from  that  of  Prince,  afterwards  King,  Aeldfrid  of  Northum- 
bria,  who,  in  those  good  old  days,  praised,  in  a  Gaelic 
poem  of  his  own,  the  beauty  and  hospitality  and  learning 
and  wisdom  of  Ancient  Erin. 

Then  the  foreign  students  learnt  Irish  from  their  Irish 
teachers,  and  carried  Gaelic  poetry  abroad  with  them  into 
France,  Spain,  Germany  and  Scandinavia,  there  infusing 
their  native  verse  with  such  Irish  elements  as  are  found,  as 
pointed  out,  in  the  Spanish  redonddlas. 

It  will  thus  be  seen  that  Gaelic  verse,  written  side  by 
side  with  Latin,  had  not  only  influenced  that  language  in 
rhyme  and  accent,  but  had  begun  to  emerge  as  a  separate 
vehicle  for  the  expression  of  religious  thought  as  early  as 
the  fifth  century. 

I  propose  here  to  place  before  the  readers  of  the 
Dublin  Review  a  few  translations  of  some  of  the  Gaelic 
religious  poems  in  early  Irish,  collected  by  Professor  Kuno 
Meyer,  and  the  editors  of  The  Irish  Liber  Hymnorum. 

Let  me  preface  my  own  translations  with  one  by  Dr. 
Sigerson,  published  in  his  work  already  referred  to.  He 
prefixes  to  this  translation  the  following  observations  : 

In  Gaelic,  many  hymns  and  poems  relating  to  religious  subjects 
made  their  appearance  subsequent  to  St.  Patrick's  Guardsman's  Cry. 
They  show  originality  and  independence  of  thought  and  expression. 


104  IRISH   LITERARY   AND   MUSICAL  STUDIES 

Perhaps  the  earliest  is  the  Hymn  of  St.  Ita  (who  was  born  A.D. 
480)  ;  it  is  classic  in  form  and  bold  in  conception. 

The  absolute  faith  of  the  ancient  Irish  inspired  them  with  the  love 
which  casts  out  fear,  and  their  poems  show  no  trace  of  servile  dread. 

They  prefixed  the  pronoun  "mo,"  "my,"  to  the  names  of  their 
saints,  which  they  modified  by  fond  diminutives. 

Saint  Ita,  in  this  way,  uses  an  endearing  diminutive  with  the  name 
of  the  Redeemer.  "  Isa,"  the  ancient  Irish  form  of  Jesus  (which  is  now 
"losa")  became  "Isucan" — Jesukin — in  her  poem.  It  was  applied 
to  the  infant  Saviour  who,  it  was  believed,  abode  with  her  at  night,  in 
her  lonely  cell  in  the  desert.  The  following  translation  is  in  the  metre 
of  the  original : 

JESUKIN. 
St.  Ita  (B.  480—0.  570.) 

Jesukin 

Lives  my  little  cell  within  ; 
What  were  wealth  of  cleric  high- 
All  is  lie  but  Jesukin. 

Nursling  nurtured,  as  'tis  right — 
Harbours  here  no  servile  spright — 
Jesu  of  the  skies,  who  art 
Next  my  heart  thro'  every  night ! 

Jesukin,  my  good  for  aye, 
Calling  and  will  not  have  nay, 
King  of  all  things,  ever  true, 
He  shall  rue  who  will  away. 

Jesu,  more  than  angels'  aid, 
Fosterling  not  formed  to  fade, 
Nursed  by  me  in  desert  wild, 
Jesu,  child  of  Judah's  Maid. 

Sons  of  Kings  and  kingly  kin 
To  my  land  may  enter  in  ; 
Guest  of  none  I  hope  to  be, 
Save  of  Thee,  my  Jesukin  1 

Unto  heaven's  High  King  confest, 
Sing  a  chorus,  maidens  blest  ! 
He  is  o'er  us,  though  within 
Jesukin  is  on  my  breast! 


EARLY    IRISH    RELIGIOUS    POETRY  105 

The  legendary  story  of  the  famous  hymn  known  as 
The  Lorica  of  St.  Patrick,  or  The  Guardsman's  Cry,  or  The 
Deer's  Cry,  is,  according  to  the  Tripartite  Life  of  St.  Patrick, 
as  follows : 

"  Patrick  and  King  Loegaire  (Leary)  met  at  Tara  Hill, 
when  that  monarch  was  presiding  at  a  heathen  festival, 
which  was  to  begin  with  the  extinction  of  all  fires  through- 
out the  country.  But  Patrick  disregarded  the  regulation, 
and  defiantly  lighted  his  Paschal  fire  on  the  Hill  of  Slane, 
in  full  view  of  the  King  and  his  Druids.  Then  followed 
contested  arguments  between  the  Saint  and  the  Druids,  in 
which  Patrick  triumphed,  as  Moses  of  old  triumphed  over 
the  magicians  of  Egypt.  The  King  thereupon  purposed  to 
kill  Patrick  by  a  treacherous  assault ;  but  he  and  his  com- 
panions escaped,  being  miraculously  transformed  into  deer, 
but  the  hymn  or  chant  which  he  recited  in  his  flight  was 
the  '  Lorica  S.  Patricii,'  commonly  called  '  Faeth  Fiada,'  or 
'  The  Deer's  Cry ' — the  chanting  of  the  Saint  and  his 
monks  appearing  to  those  lying  in  ambush  against  them  to 
be  the  cry  of  deer." 

In  his  Essay  on  Tara  Hill,  published  in  1839,  in  which 
this  piece  was  first  printed,  Petrie  stated  that  some  portions 
of  the  hymn  were  then  in  use  amongst  the  peasantry,  and 
repeated  at  bed-time  as  a  protection  against  evil.  But 
Dr.  O'Donovan  translates  "  fath  fia  "  to  mean  magical  dark- 
ness, and  Professor  O'Curry  explains  that  "  fath  fiadha  "  was 
a  spell,  peculiar  to  druids  and  poets,  who,  by  pronouncing 
certain  verses,  made  themselves  invisible.  "  Thus  The  Lorica 
may  have  gained  its  title,  not  from  any  tradition  about 
St.  Patrick  and  the  deer  at  Tara,"  writes  Dr.  Bernard,  "  but 
from  its  use  as  a  charm  or  incantation  to  ensure  invisibility." 
That  the  hymn  is  of  early  date  there  can  be  no  doubt,  and 
it  may  be  identified  with  the  "  Canticum  Scoticum,"  ordered 
to  be  sung  in  all  Irish  monasteries  in  honour  of  St.  Patrick. 
" The  original,"  writes  Dr.  Sigerson,  "is  a  '  Rosg,'  a  poem 
of  short  sentences,  with  irregular  rhythm  and  rime." 


T06  IRISH    LITERARY   AND    MUSICAL   STUDIES 


THE  BREASTPLATE  OF  ST.  PATRICK. 

I  invoke,  upon  my  path 

To  the  King  of  Ireland's  rath, 

The  Almighty  power  of  the  Trinity  ; 
Through  belief  in  the  Threeness, 
Through  confession  of  the  Oneness 

Of  the  Maker's  Eternal  Divinity. 

I  invoke,  on  my  journey  arising, 

The  power  of  Christ's  Birth  and  Baptizing, 

The  powers  of  the  hours  of  His  dread  Crucifixion, 

Of  His  Death  and  Abode  in  the  Tomb, 
The  power  of  the  hour  of  His  glorious  Resurrection 

From  out  the  Gehenna  of  gloom, 
The  power  of  the  hour  when  to  Heaven  He  ascended, 
And  the  power  of  the  hour  when  by  Angels  attended 

He  returns  for  the  Judgment  of  Doom  ! 
On  my  perilous  way 
To  Tara  to-day, 
I,  Patrick,  God's  servant, 
Invoke  from  above 
The  Cherubim's  love  ! 

Yea  !  I  summon  the  might  of  the  Company  fervent 
Of  Angel  obedient,  ministrant  Archangel 
To  speed  and  to  prosper  my  Irish  Evangel. 
I  go  forth  on  my  path  in  the  trust 
Of  the  gathering  to  God  of  the  Just  ; 
In  the  power  of  the  Patriarchs'  prayers  ; 
The  foreknowledge  of  Prophets  and  Seers  ; 
The  Apostles'  pure  preaching  ; 
The  Confessors'  sure  teaching  ; 
The  virginity  blest  of  God's  Dedicate  Daughters, 
And  the  lives  and  the  deaths  of  His  Saints  and  His  Martyrs 

I  arise  to-day  in  the  strength  of  the  heaven, 

The  glory  of  the  sun, 

The  radiance  of  the  moon, 

The  splendour  of  fire  and  the  swiftness  of  the  levin, 
The  wind's  flying  force, 

The  depth  of  the  sea, 
The  earth's  steadfast  course, 

The  rock's  austerity. 


EARLY   IRISH   RELIGIOUS   POETRY  1 07 

I  arise  on  my  way, 
With  God's  Strength  for  my  stay, 
God's  Might  to  protect  me, 
God's  Wisdom  to  direct  me, 
God's  Eye  to  be  my  providence, 
God's  Ear  to  take  my  evidence, 
God's  Word  my  words  to  order, 
God's  Hand  to  be  my  warder, 
God's  Way  to  lie  before  me, 
God's  Shield  and  Buckler  o'er  me, 
God's  Host  Unseen  to  save  me, 
From  each  ambush  of  the  Devil, 

From  each  vice  that  would  enslave  m  c, 
And  from  all  who  wish  me  evil, 

Whether  far  I  fare  or  near, 

Alone  or  in  a  multitude. 

All  these  Hierarchies  and  Powers 

I  invoke  to  intervene, 
When  the  adversary  lowers 

On  my  path,  with  purpose  keen 
Of  vengeance  black  and  bloody 
On  my  soul  and  on  my  body  ; 
I  bind  these  Powers  to  come 

Against  Druid  counsel  dark, 
The  black  craft  of  Pagandom, 

And  the  false  heresiarch, 
The  spells  of  wicked  women, 
And  the  wizard's  arts  inhuman, 
And  every  knowledge,  old  and  fresh, 
Corniptive  of  man's  soul  and  flesh. 

May  Christ,  on  my  way 
To  Tara  to-day, 
Shield  me  from  poison, 

Shield  me  from  fire, 
Drowning  or  wounding 

By  enemy's  ire, 
So  that  mighty  fruition 
May  follow  my  mission. 
Christ  behind  and  before  me, 
Christ  beneath  me  and  o'er  me, 
Christ  within  and  without  me, 
Christ  with  and  about  me, 


Io8  IRISH    LITERARY    AND    MUSICAL   STUDIES 

Christ  on  my  left  and  Christ  on  my  right, 
Christ  with  me  at  morn  and  Christ  with  me  at  night ; 
Christ  in  each  heart  that  shall  ever  take  thought  of  me, 
Christ  in  each  mouth  that  shall  ever  speak  aught  of  me  ; 
Christ  in  each  eye  that  shall  ever  on  me  fasten, 
Christ  in  each  ear  that  shall  ever  to  me  listen. 

I  invoke,  upon  my  path 

To  the  King  of  Ireland's  rath, 

The  Almighty  Power  of  the  Trinity  ; 
Through  belief  in  the  Threeness, 
Through  confession  of  the  Oneness 

Of  the  Maker's  Eternal  Divinity. 

The  originals  of  these  early  religious  poems  are  as 
remarkable  for  their  style  as  Matthew  Arnold  leads  us  to 
expect  in  a  fine  passage  on  the  study  of  Celtic  literature. 

"  The  Celts  certainly  have  style  in  a  wonderful  measure. 
Style  is  the  most  striking  quality  of  their  poetry.  Celtic 
poetry  seems  to  make  up  to  itself  for  being  unable  to 
master  the  world  and  give  an  adequate  interpretation  of  it, 
by  throwing  all  its  force  into  style,  by  bending  language,  at 
any  rate,  to  its  will,  and  expressing  the  ideas  it  has  with 
unsurpassable  intensity,  elevation,  and  effect.  It  has  all 
through  it  a  sort  of  intoxication  of  style — a  Pindarism,  to 
use  a  word  formed  from  the  name  of  the  poet,  on  whom, 
above  all  other  poets,  the  power  of  style  seems  to  have 
exercised  an  inspiring  and  intoxicating  effect ;  and  not  in 
its  great  poets  only,  in  Taliesin,  or  Llywarch  Hen,  or 
Ossian,  does  the  Celtic  genius  show  this  Pindarism,  but  in 
all  its  productions  : 

The  grave  of  March  is  this,  and  this  the  grave  of  Gwythyr  ; 
Here  is  the  grave  of  Gwgawn  Gleddyfreidd  ; 
But  unknown  is  the  grave  of  Arthur. 

That  comes  from  the  Welsh  Memorials  of  the  Graves  of  the 
Warriors,  and  if  we  compare  it  with  the  familiar  memorial 
inscriptions  of  an  English  churchyard  (for  we  English  have 


EARLY    IRISH    RELIGIOUS    POETRY  lOQ 

so  much  Germanism  in  us  that  our  productions  offer  abun- 
dant examples  of  German  want  of  style  as  well  as  of  its 
opposite)  : 

Afflictions  sore  long  time  I  bore, 

Physicians  were  in  vain, 

Till  God  did  please  Death  should  me  seize, 

And  ease  me  of  my  pain — 

If,  I  say,  we  compare  the  Welsh  memorial  lines  with  the 
English,  which,  in  their  Gemeinheit  of  style  are  truly 
Germanic,  we  shall  get  a  clear  sense  of  what  that  Celtic 
talent  for  style  I  have  been  speaking  of  is. 

Or  take  this  epitaph  of  an  Irish  Celt,  ^-Engus  the  Culdee, 
whose  '  felire,'  or  festology,  I  have  already  mentioned ;  a 
festology  in  which,  at  the  end  of  the  eighth  or  beginning  of 
the  ninth  century,  he  collected  from  '  the  countless  hosts  of 
the  illuminated  books  of  Erin '  (to  use  his  own  words)  the 
festivals  of  the  Irish  saints,  his  poem  having  a  stanza  for 
every  day  in  the  year.  The  epitaph  on  ^Engus,  who  died 
at  Cluain  Eidhnech,  in  Queen's  County,  is  by  no  eminent 
hand,  and  yet  a  Greek  epitaph  could  not  show  a  finer 
perception  of  what  constitutes  propriety  and  felicity  of 
style  in  compositions  of  this  nature." 

ON   ,ENGUS   THE   CULDEE. 

Delightful  here  at  Disert  Bethel, 
By  cold,  pure  Nore  at  peace  to  rest, 

Where  noisy  raids  have  never  sullied 
The  beechen  forest's  virgin  vest. 

For  here  the  Angel  Host  would  visit 
Of  yore  with  yEngus,  Oivlen's  son, 

As  in  his  cross-ringed  cell  he  lauded 
The  One  in  Three,  the  Three  in  One. 

To  death  he  passed  upon  a  Friday, 
The  day  they  slew  our  Blessed  Lord. 

Here  stands  his  tomb  ;  unto  the  Assembly 
Of  Holy  Heaven  his  soul  has  soared. 


110  IRISH    LITERARY   AND   MUSICAL   STUDIES 

'Twas  in  Cloneagh  he  had  his  rearing  ; 

'Tis  in  Cloneagh  he  now  lies  dead, 
'Twas  in  Cloneagh  of  many  crosses 

That  first  his  psalms  he  read.* 

"  Irish  religious  poetry,"  writes  Professor  Kuno  Meyer, 
"  ranges  from  single  quatrains  to  lengthy  compositions 
dealing  with  all  the  varied  aspects  of  religious  life.  Many 
of  them  give  us  a  fascinating  insight  into  the  peculiar  char- 
acter of  the  early  Irish  Church,  which  differed  in  so  many 
ways  from  the  Christian  world.  We  see  the  hermit  in  his 
lonely  cell,  the  monk  at  his  devotions  or  at  his  work  of 
copying  in  the  scriptorium  or  under  the  open  sky ;  or  we 
hear  the  ascetic  who,  alone  or  with  twelve  chosen  com- 
panions, has  left  one  of  the  great  monasteries  in  order  to 
live  in  greater  solitude  among  the  woods  or  mountains,  or 
on  a  lonely  island.  The  fact  that  so  many  of  these  poems 
are  fathered  upon  well-known  saints  emphasises  the  friendly 
attitude  of  the  native  clergy  towards  vernacular  poetry." 

With  these  words  before  me,  which  summarise  the  con- 
tents of  the  Professor's  section  of  Religious  Poetry  in  his 
beautiful  prose  translations  from  Ancient  Irish  Poetry  in 
his  book  of  that  name,  published  a  year  ago  by  Messrs. 
Constable,  let  me  express  my  deep  indebtedness  to  him  for 
the  pleasure  these  consummate  versions  from  the  Gaelic 
have  given  me. 

They  beguiled  the  tedium  of  a  troublesome  illness  last 
spring,  and  if  the  verse  translations  that  follow  have  been 
successful,  it  is  largely  because  they  have  caught,  through 
Professor  Kuno  Meyer's  prose,  some  of  the  inspiration  of 
their  Gaelic  originals. 

*  Matthew  Arnold  only  quotes  the  last  two  quatrains  of  this  epitaph 
in  the  following  prose  version  : 

"  Angus  is  in  the  assembly  of  Heaven,  here  are  his  tomb  and  his 
bed  ;  it  is  from  hence  he  went  to  death  in  the  Friday,  to  holy  Heaven. 
It  was  in  Cluain  Eidhnech  he  was  rear'd  ;  in  was  in  Cluain  Eidhnech 
he  was  buried;  in  Cluain  Eidhnech,  of  many  crosses,  he  first  read  his 
psalms."  The  verse  rendering  of  the  whole  poem  is  my  own.  A.  P.  G. 


EARLY    IRISH    RELIGIOUS    POETRY 


CRINOG. 

A.D.  900 — I,OOO. 

[This  poem  relates,  on  the  authority  of  Professor  Kuno  Meyer,  by 
whom  the  Irish  text  was  first  published,  "  to  one  who  lived  like  a  sister 
or  spiritual  wife  with  a  priest,  monk,  or  hermit,  a  practice  which,  while 
early  suppressed  and  abandoned  everywhere  else,  seems  to  have  survived 
in  the  Irish  Church  till  the  tenth  century."] 

Crinog  of  melodious  song, 

No  longer  young,  but  bashful-eyed, 

As  when  we  roved  Niall's  Northern  Land, 
Hand  in  hand,  or  side  by  side. 

Peerless  maid,  whose  looks  ran  o'er 

With  the  lovely  lore  of  Heaven, 
By  whom  I  slept  in  dreamless  joy, 

A  gentle  boy  of  summers  seven. 

We  dwelt  in  Banva's  broad  domain, 

Without  one  stain  of  soul  or  sense  ; 
While  still  mine  eye  flashed  forth  on  thee 

Affection  free  of  all  offence. 

To  meet  thy  counsel  quick  and  just, 
Our  faithful  trust  responsive  springs  ; 

Better  thy  wisdom's  searching  force 
Than  any  smooth  discourse  with  kings. 

In  sinless  sisterhood  with  men, 

Four  times  since  then,  hast  thou  been  bound, 

Yet  not  one  rumour  of  ill-fame 

Against  thy  name  has  travelled  round. 

At  last,  their  weary  wanderings  o'er, 
To  me  once  more  thy  footsteps  tend  ; 

The  gloom  of  age  makes  dark  thy  face, 
Thy  life  of  grace  draws  near  its  end. 

Oh,  faultless  one  and  very  dear, 

Unstinted  welcome  here  is  thine. 
Hell's  haunting  dread  I  ne'er  shall  feel, 

So  thou  be  kneeling  at  my  side 


IRISH    LITERARY   AND    MUSICAL    STUDIES 

Thy  blessed  fame  shall  ever  bide, 
For  far  and  wide  thy  feet  have  trod. 

Could  we  their  saintly  track  pursue, 
We  yet  should  view  the  Living  God. 

You  leave  a  pattern  and  bequest 
To  all  who  rest  upon  the  earth — 

A  life-long  lesson  to  declare 

Of  earnest  prayer  the  precious  worth. 

God  grant  us  peace  and  joyful  love  ! 

And  may  the  countenance  of  Heaven's  King 
Beam  on  us,  when  we  leave  behind 

Our  bodies  blind  and  withering. 


THE  DEVIL'S  TRIBUTE  TO  MOLING. 

(Once,  when  St.  Moling  was  praying  in  his  church,  the  Devil  visited 
him  in  purple  raiment  and  distinguished  form.  On  being  challenged 
by  the  saint,  he  declared  himself  to  be  the  Christ,  but  on  Moling's 
raising  the  Gospel  to  disprove  his  claim,  the  Evil  One  confessed  that  he 
was  Satan.  "  Wherefore  hast  thou  come?  "  asked  Moling.  "  For  a 
blessing,"  the  Devil  replied.  "  Thou  shall  not  have  it,"  said  Moling, 
"for  thou  deservest  it  not."  "  Well,  then,"  said  the  Devil,  "bestow 
the  full  of  a  curse  on  me."  "What  good  were  that  to  thee?"  asked 
Moling.  "The  venom  and  the  hurt  of  the  curse  will  be  on  the  lips 
from  which  it  will  come."  After  further  parley,  the  Devil  paid  this 
tribute  to  Moling.) 

He  is  pure  gold,  the  sky  around  the  sun, 
A  silver  chalice  brimmed  with  blessed  wine, 
An  Angel  shape,  a  book  of  lore  divine, 

Whoso  obeys  in  all  the  Eternal  One. 

He  is  a  foolish  bird  that  fowlers  lime, 

A  leaking  ship  in  utmost  jeopardy, 

An  empty  vessel  and  a  withered  tree, 
Who  disobeys  the  Sovereign  Sublime. 

A  fragrant  branch  with  blossoms  overrun, 
A  bounteous  bowl  with  honey  overflowing, 
A  precious  stone,  of  virtue  past  all  knowing 

Is  he  who  doth  the  will  of  God's  dear  Son. 


EARLY    IRISH    RELIGIOUS    POETRY  113 

A  nut  that  only  emptiness  doth  fill, 

A  sink  of  foulness,  a  crookt  branch  is  he 

Upon  a  blossomless  crab-apple  tree, 
Who  doeth  not  his  Heavenly  Master's  will. 

Whoso  obeys  the  Son  of  God  and  Mary — 

He  is  a  sunflash  lighting  up  the  moor, 

He  is  a  dais  on  the  Heavenly  Floor, 
A  pure  and  very  precious  reliquary. 

A  sun  heaven-cheering  he,  in  whose  warm  beam 
The  King  of  Kings  takes  ever  fresh  delight, 
He  is  a  temple,  noble,  blessed,  bright, 

A  saintly  shrine  with  gems  and  gold  a-gleam. 

The  altar  he,  whence  bread  and  wine  are  told, 
Where  countless  melodies  around  are  hymned, 
A  chalice  cleansed,  from  God's  own  grapes  upbrimmed, 

Upon  Christ's  garment's  hem  the  joyful  gold. 


MAELISU'S    HYMN   TO   THE   ARCHANGEL   MICHAEL. 

By  Maelisu  ua  Brochain,  a  writer  of  religious  poetry  both  in  Irish 
and  Latin,  who  died  in  1051. 

Mael-Isu  means  "  the  tonsured  of  Jesus."  He  is  the  author  of  the 
beautiful  "  Hymn  to  the  Holy  Spirit." 

Angel  and  Saint, 

O  Michael  of  the  oracles, 

O  Michael  of  great  miracles, 
Bear  to  the  Lord  my  plaint  ! 

Hear  my  request ! 

Ask  of  the  great,  forgiving  God, 
To  lift  this  vast  and  grievous  load 

Of  sin  from  off  my  breast. 

Why,  Michael,  tarry, 

My  fervent  prayer  with  upward  wing 
Unto  the  King,  the  great  High  King 

Of  Heaven  and  Earth  to  carry  ? 

Upon  my  soul 

Bring  help,  bring  comfort,  yea,  bring  power 
To  win  release,  in  death's  black  hour, 

From  sin,  distress  and  dole. 

I 


II4  IRISH   LITERARY   AND   MUSICAL   STUDIES 

Till,  as  devoutly 

My  fading  eyes  seek  Heaven's  dim  height  ; 

To  meet  me,  with  thy  myriads  bright, 
Do  thou  adventure  stoutly. 

Captain  of  hosts, 

Against  earth's  wicked,  crooked  clan 
To  aid  me  lead  thy  battle  van, 

And  quell  their  cruel  boasts. 

Archangel  glorious, 

Disdain  not  now  thy  suppliant  urgent, 
But  over  every  sin  insurgent 

Set  me  at  last  victorious. 

Thou  art  my  choosing  ! 

That  with  my  body,  soul  and  spirit 

Eternal  life  I  may  inherit, 
Thine  aid  be  not  refusing  ! 

In  my  sore  need 

O  thou  of  Anti-Christ  the  slayer, 
Triumphant  victor,  to  my  prayer 

Give  heed,  O  now  give  heed  1 


THE   HERMIT'S  SONG. 

See   Eriu,    vol.    I,   p.    39,    where   the   Irish  text  will  be  found. 
According  to  Professor  Kuno  Meyer  it  dates  from  the  ninth  century. 

I  long,  O  Son  of  the  living  God, 

Ancient,  eternal  King, 
For  a  hidden  hut  on  the  wilds  untrod, 

Where  Thy  praises  I  might  sing  ; 
A  little,  lithe  lark  of  plumage  grey 

To  be  singing  still  beside  it, 
Pure  waters  to  wash  my  sin  away, 

When  Thy  Spirit  has  sanctified  it. 
Hard  by  it  a  beautiful,  whispering  wood 

Should  stretch,  upon  either  hand, 
To  nurse  the  many-voiced  fluttering  brood 

In  its  shelter  green  and  bland. 
Southward,  for  warmth,  should  my  hermitage  face, 

With  a  runnel  across  its  floor, 
In  a  choice  land  gifted  with  every  grace, 

And  good  for  all  manner  of  store. 


EARLY   IRISH   RELIGIOUS    POETRY 

A  few  true  comrades  I  next  would  seek 

To  mingle  with  me  in  prayer, 
Men  of  wisdom,  submissive,  meek  ; 

Their  number  I  now  declare, 
Four  times  three  and  three  times  four, 

For  every  want  expedient, 
Sixes  two  within  God's  Church  door, 

To  north  and  south  obedient  ; 
Twelve  to  mingle  their  voices  with  mine 

At  prayer,  whate'er  the  weather, 
To  Him  Who  bids  His  dear  sun  shine 

On  the  good  and  ill  together. 
Pleasant  the  Church  with  fair  Mass  cloth — 

No  dwelling  for  Christ's  declining — 
To  its  crystal  candles,  of  bees-wax  both, 

On  the  pure,  white  Scriptures  shining. 
Beside  it  a  hostel  for  all  to  frequent, 

Warm  with  a  welcome  for  each, 
Where  mouths,  free  of  boastinglandiribaldry,  vent 

But  modest  and  innocent  speech. 
These  aids  to  support  us  my  husbandry  seeks, 

I  name  them  now  without  hiding — 
Salmon  and  trout  and  hens  and  leeks, 

And  the  honey-bees'  sweet  providing. 
Raiment  and  food  enow  will  be  mine 

From  the  King  of  all  gifts  and  all  graces  ; 
And  I  to  be  kneeling,  through  rain  or  shine, 

Praying  to  God  in  all  places. 


A   PRAYER  TO  THE  VIRGIN. 

Edited  by  Strachan  in  Eriu,  vol.   I,  p.  122.     Tenth  or  perhaps 
ninth  century. 

Gentle  Mary,  Noble  Maiden, 

Hearken  to  our  suppliant  pleas  ! 
Shrine  God's  only  Son  was  laid  in  ! 
Casket  of  the  Mysteries  ! 

Holy  Maid,  pure  Queen  of  Heaven, 

Intercession  for  us  make, 
That  each  hardened  heart's  transgression 

May  be  pardoned  for  Thy  sake. 


Il6  IRISH    LITERARY   AND    MUSICAL   STUDIES 

Bent  in  loving  pity  o'er  us, 
Through  the  Holy  Spirit's  power, 

Pray  the  King  of  Angels  for  us 
In  Thy  Visitation  hour. 

Branch  of  Jesse's  tree  whose  blossoms 
Scent  the  heavenly  hazel  wood, 

Pray  for  me  for  full  purgation 
Of  my  bosom's  turpitude. 

Mary,  crown  of  splendour  glowing, 
Dear  destroyer  of  Eve's  ill, 

Noble  torch  of  Love  far-showing, 
Fruitful  Stock  of  God's  good  will  ; 

Heavenly  Virgin,  Maid  transcendent, 
Yea  !  He  willed  that  Thou  should'st  be 

His  fair  Ark  of  Life  Resplendent, 
His  pure  Queen  of  Chastity. 

Mother  of  all  good,  to  free  me, 

Interceding  at  my  side, 
Pray  Thy  First-Born  to  redeem  me, 

When  the  Judgment  books  are  wide  ; 

Star  of  knowledge,  rare  and  noble, 
Tree  of  many-blossoming  sprays, 

Lamp  to  light  our  night  of  trouble, 
Sun  to  cheer  our  weary  days  ; 

Ladder  to  the  Heavenly  Highway, 
Whither  every  Saint  ascends, 

Be  a  safeguard  still,  till  my  way 
In  Thy  glorious  Kingdom  ends  ! 

Covert  fair  of  sweet  protection, 
Chosen  for  a  Monarch's  rest, 

Hostel  for  nine  months'  refection 
Of  a  Noble  Infant  Guest  ; 

Glorious  Heavenly  Porch,  whereunder, 
So  the  day  star  sinks  his  head, 

God's  Own  Son — O  saving  wonder  J 
Jesus  was  incarnated  ; 


EARLY    IRISH    RELIGIOUS   POETRY  1I^ 

For  the  fair  Babe's  sake  conceived 

In  Thy  womb  and  brought  to  birth, 
For  the  Blest  Child's  sake,  received 

Now  as  King  of  Heaven  and  Earth  ; 

For  His  Rood's  sake  !  starker,  steeper 

Hath  no  other  Cross  been  set, 
For  His  Tomb's  sake  !  darker,  deeper 

There  hath  been  no  burial  yet  ; 

By  His  Blessed  Resurrection, 

When  He  triumphed  o'er  the  tomb, 
By  The  Church  of  His  affection 

During  till  the  Day  of  Doom, 

Safeguard  our  unblest  behaviour, 

Till  behind  Death's  blinding  veil, 
Face  to  face,  we  see  our  Saviour. 

This  our  prayer  is  :  Hail !  All  Hail  ! 


ON  THE  FLIGHTINESS  OF  THOUGHT. 
A  tenth  century  poem.     See  Eriu,  vol.  in,  p.  13. 

Shame  upon  my  thoughts,  O  shame ! 

How  they  fly  in  order  broken, 
Much  therefore  I  fear  the  blame 

When  the  Trump  of  Doom  has  spoken. 

At  my  psalms,  they  oft  are  set 

On  a  path  the  Fiend  must  pave  them  ; 

Evermore,  with  fash  and  fret, 

In  God's  sight  they  misbehave  them. 

Through  contending  crowds  they  fleet, 
Companies  of  wanton  women, 

Silent  wood  or  strident  street, 

Swifter  than  the  breezes  skimming. 

Now  through  paths  of  loveliness, 
Now  through  ranks  of  shameful  riot, 

Onward  evermore  they  press, 
Fledged  with  folly  and  disquiet. 


Il8  IRISH   LITERARY   AND   MUSICAL   STUDIES 

.    O'er  the  Ocean's  sounding  deep 

Now  they  flash  like  fiery  levin  ; 

Now  at  one  vast  bound  they  leap 

Up  from  earth  into  the  heaven. 


Thus  afar  and  near  they  roam 
On  their  race  of  idle  folly  ; 

Till  at  last  to  reason's  home 
They  return  right  melancholy. 


Would  you  bind  them  wrist  to  wrist  — 
Foot  to  foot  the  truants  shackle, 

From  your  toils  away  they  twist 
Into  air  with  giddy  cackle. 


Crack  of  whip  or  edge  of  steel 

Cannot  hold  them  in  your  keeping  ; 

With  the  wriggle  of  an  eel 

From  your  grasp  they  still  go  leapin 


Never  yet  was  fetter  found, 

Never  lock  contrived,  to  hold  them  ; 
Never  dungeon  underground, 

Moor  or  mountain  keep  controlled  ther 


Thou  Whose  glance  alone  makes  pure, 
Searcher  of  all  hearts  and  Saviour, 

With  Thy  Sevenfold  Spirit  cure 

My  stray  thoughts'  unblessed  behaviour. 


God  of  earth,  air,  fire  and  flood, 
Rule  me,  rule  me  in  such  measure, 

That,  to  my  eternal  good, 

I  may  live  to  love  Thy  pleasure. 


Christ's  own  flock  thus  may  I  reach, 
At  the  flash  of  Death's  sharp  sickle, 

Just  in  deed,  of  steadfast  speech, 
Not,  as  now,  infirm  and  fickle. 


EARLY    IRISH    RELIGIOUS    POETRY  119 

THE  MOTHERS'  LAMENT  AT  THE  SLAUGHTER  OF  THE 

INNOCENTS. 

Probably  a  poem  of  the  eleventh  century.  It  is  written  in  Rosg 
metre,  and  was  first  published  by  Professor  Kuno  Meyer,  in  Tke  Gaelic 
Journal,  May,  1891. 

Then,  as  the  executioner  phicked  her  son  from  her  breast,  one  of  the 
women  said : 

"  Why  are  you  tearing 
Away  to  his  doom, 
The  child  of  my  caring, 

The  fruit  of  my  womb. 
Till  nine  months  were  o'er, 
His  burthen  I  bore, 
Then  his  pretty  lips  pressed 
The  glad  milk  from  my  breast, 
And  my  whole  heart  he  filled, 
And  my  whole  life  he  thrilled. 

All  my  strength  dies, 

My  tongue  speechless  lies, 

Darkened  are  my  eyes  ! 

His  breath  was  the  breath  of  me  ; 

His  death  is  the  death  of  me  !  " 

Then  another  woman  said : 

"  Tis  my  own  son  that  from  me  you  wring, 
/deceived  not  the  King. 
But  slay  me,  even  me, 
And  let  my  boy  be. 
A  mother  most  hapless, 
My  bosom  is  sapless, 
Mine  eyes  one  tearful  river, 
My  frame  one  fearful  shiver, 
My  husband  sonless  ever, 
And  I  a  sonless  wife, 
To  live  a  death  in  life. 

Oh,  my  son  !     Oh,  God  of  Truth  ! 
Oh,  my  unrewarded  youth  ! 
Oh,  my  birthless  sicknesses, 
Until  doom  without  redress  ! 
Oh,  my  bosom's  silent  nest  ! 
Oh,  the  heart  broke  in  my  breast !  " 


120  IRISH    LITERARY   AND    MUSICAL   STUDIES 

Then  said  another  woman  : 

"  Murderers,  obeying 

Herod's  wicked  willing, 
One  ye  would  be  slaying, 

Many  are  ye  killing. 
Infants  would  ye  smother  ? 

Ruffians  ye  have  rather 

Wounded  many  a  father, 
Slaughtered  many  a  mother. 
Hell's  black  jaws  your  horrid  deed  is  glutting, 
Heaven's  white  gate  against  your  black  souls  shutting. 

Ye  are  guilty  of  the  Great  Offence  ! 
Ye  have  spilt  the  blood  of  Innocence." 

And  yet  another  woman  said  : 

"  O  Lord  Christ  come  to  me  ! 

Nay,  no  longer  tarry  ! 
With  my  son,  home  to  Thee 

My  soul  quickly  carry. 
O  Mary  great,  O  Mary  mild, 

Of  God's  One  Son  the  Mother, 
What  shall  I  do  without  my  child, 

For  I  have  now  no  other. 
For  Thy  Son's  sake  my  son  they  slew, 

Those  murderers  inhuman  ; 
My  sense  and  soul  they  slaughtered  too. 

I  am  but  a  crazy  woman. 
Yea  !  after  that  most  piteous  slaughter, 
When  my  babe's  life  ran  out  like  water, 
The  heart  within  my  bosom  hath  become 
A  clot  of  Llood  from  this  day  till  the  Doom  !  " 


THE  MONK  AND  HIS  WHITE  CAT. 

After   an   eighth  or  early  ninth   century  Irish  poem.      Text  and 
translation  in  Thesaurus  Palaohibernicus. 

Pangar,  my  white  cat,  and  I 

Silent  ply  our  special  crafts  ; 
Hunting  mice  his  one  pursuit, 

Mine  to  shoot  keen  spirit  shafts. 


EARLY    IRISH   RELIGIOUS   POETRY 

Rest  I  love,  all  fame  beyond, 
In  the  bond  of  some  rare  book  ; 

Yet  white  Pangar  from  his  play 
Casts,  my  way,  no  jealous  look. 

Thus  alone  within  one  cell 

Safe  we  dwell — not  dull  the  tale — 

Since  his  ever  favourite  sport 
Each  to  court  will  never  fail. 

Now  a  mouse,  to  swell  his  spoils, 
In  his  toils  he  spears  with  skill ; 

Now  a  meaning  deeply  thought 
I  have  caught  with  startled  thrill. 

Now  his  green  full-shining  gaze 
Darts  its  rays  against  the  wall ; 

Now  my  feebler  glances  mark 

Through  the  dark  bright  knowledge  fall. 

Leaping  up  with  joyful  purr, 

In  mouse  fur  his  sharp  claw  sticks, 

Problems  difficult  and  dear 
With  my  spear  I,  too,  transfix. 

Crossing  not  each  other's  will, 

Diverse  still,  yet  still  allied, 
Following  each  his  own  lone  ends, 

Constant  friends  we  here  abide. 

Pangar,  master  of  his  art, 

Plays  his  part  in  pranksome  youth  : 
While,  in  age  sedate,  I  clear 

Shadows  from  the  sphere  of  Trudu 


IRISH   LITERARY   AND   MUSICAL   STUDIES 


THE   RELIGIOUS   SONGS   OF   CONNACHT 

FOR  vigour  and  versatility  Dr.  Douglas  Hyde  occupies  a 
unique  position  amongst  Irishmen  of  letters.  A  fine  classical 
and  modern  languages  scholar,  he  can  yet  translate  into  racy 
Hiberno-English  prose  and  verse  his  own  Gaelic  description 
and  collection  of  the  religious  songs  of  Connacht.  He 
dedicates  them,  moreover — he,  a  Bachelor  of  Divinity  of 
Dublin  University — in  graceful  Latin,  to  the  memory  of 
Father  Eugene  O'Growney,  his  intimate  associate  in  the  Irish 
language  revival.  Could  literary  catholicity  go  much 
further  ? 

An  extract  from  his  interesting  preface  will  show  the 
scope  and  purpose  of  the  work  : 

While  collecting  the  poetry  of  the  province  of  Connacht— a  work 
which  I  began  some  twenty  years  ago — I  found  that  those  poems  which 
touched  upon  piety  or  religion  were  very  numerous.  I  found,  more- 
over, that  prayers  put  in  a  setting  of  poetry,  melodious  "paidirs:'  and 
short  petitions  composed  in  metre,  were  very  numerous  also.  I  found 
at  the  same  time  charms  or  "orthas"  or  "ainhras,"  I  found  pieces 
concerning  the  Church,  I  found  pieces  praising  or  dispraising  people 
for  their  religion,  I  found  stories  about  the  Church  or  about  the 
persecution  of  the  Church,  or  about  some  saint  or  other,  I  found 
blessings,  I  found  curses,  and  I  put  all  these  things  down  here  with 
the  rest.  These  things  are  all  mixed  together  in  this  book.  There  is 
no  special  order  or  arrangement  in  them,  and  it  is  now  in  my  reader's 
power  to  form  his  own  judgment — a  thing  which  he  could  not  have 
done  if  I  had  concealed  from  him  anything  that  was  coarse,  bitter, 
foolish,  half  Pagan  or  otherwise  unpleasing.  .  .  .  Very  few  indeed  of 
these  things  have  ever  been  put  upon  paper  until  now,  and  they  will 
be  becoming  more  scarce  from  day  to  day.  If  the  "  National  Schools" 


THE   RELIGIOUS   SONGS   OF    CONNACHT  123 

ruined  the  indigenous  literature  (the  love  songs,  the  drinking  songs, 
the  keenes),  they  have  torn  these  religious  songs  up  out  of  the  roots 
altogether.  ...  "In  my  youth,"  says  Father  Walter  Conway  of 
Glenaddy,  "there  was  no  house  in  which  the  'paidirin'  or  rosary  used 
not  to  be  said  throughout  all  the  year.  When  I  came  to  this  parish 
some  eight  or  nine  years  ago,  this  custom  had  been  given  up  by  the 
majority  of  people,  I  frequently  inquired  the  cause  and  never  heard  any 
answer  except  the  one  from  everybody  :  '  We  cannot  say  it  in  English, 
and  the  young  people  will  not  repeat  it  with  us  in  Irish.' "  And 
another  priest,  Father  O'Concannon,  also  gives  evidence  of  the  neglect 
of  the  ancient  Irish  prayers  and  the  old  religious  poems,  adding  :  "  It 
is  upon  the  flagstone  of  the  hearth  that  the  foundations  of  piety  and 
nationality  are  laid,  and  alas  !  that  the  foreign  schools  should  be 
destroying  them  ! " 

Dr.  Hyde  will  certainly  have  the  sympathy  he  asks  from  his 
readers  for  having  preserved  for  the  history  of  his  country 
this  leaf  plucked  out  of  the  book  of  pre-Reformation 
Christendom.  But  to  an  historian's  and  folk-lorist's  zeal  to 
contribute  a  chapter  to  his  country's  records,  Dr.  Hyde  also 
adds  the  desire  of  a  good  Irishman  to  preserve  the  evidences 
of  her  piety  through  the  ages.  For,  as  he  points  out,  "  the 
Irish  Gael  is  pious  by  nature,  there  is  not  an  Irishman  in  a 
hundred  in  whom  is  the  making  of  an  unbeliever.  God  is 
for  him  assured,  true,  intelligible.  When  he  meets  a  neigh- 
bour, instead  of  saying  'Bon  jour'  or  'Good  morning,'  he 
says '  God  salute  you.' "  Indeed,  all  the  ordinary  invocations 
and  salutations  of  the  Irish  language  are  governed  by  this 
religious  feeling.  "  When  he  takes  snuff  from  you  he  will 
say  :  '  The  blessing  of  God  be  with  the  souls  of  your  dead.' 
If  a  sudden  wonderment  surprise  him,  he  will  cry :  '  A 
thousand  laudations  to  God ' ;  and  if  he  be  shown  a  young 
child  or  anything  else  for  the  first  time,  he  will  say  : 
'  Prosperity  from  God  on  it.' " 

Dr.  Hyde  adduces  two  reasons  for  the  persistence  of  the 
Irishman  in  the  Roman  Catholic  faith.  The  old  Church  gave 
him  more  to  believe  than  did  the  new  Churches,  and  he  was 
ready  to  believe  more  than  they  did,  even  in  the  face  of 
bitter  persecution.  Again,  the  Irish  Roman  Catholic  was 


124  IRISH    LITERARY   AND    MUSICAL   STUDIES 

never  "  insular."  Much  traffic  prevailed  between  Ireland  and 
the  Continent.  Her  clergy  were  trained  in  its  great  Colleges, 
and  brought  home  with  them  the  thoughts,  the  spirit,  and  the 
literature  of  Roman  Catholic  Europe  during  the  seventeenth 
and  eighteenth  centuries.  This  is  shown  by  the  numbers  of 
books  translated  from  the  Italian,  French,  and  Spanish  into 
Irish.  Yet  Dr.  Hyde  maintains  that,  in  spite  of  what  they 
suffered,  the  Irish  Roman  Catholics  were  not  unreasonably 
embittered  against  those  of  the  old  Gaelic  families  whom  the 
Penal  Laws  converted  to  the  new  faith,  though  the  bards  gave 
many  a  blow  to  "  Martin  "  or  to  "  John,"  and  to  "  the  lot  who 
fatten  on  Friday," — that  is  to  say,  the  people  of  the  Bearla 
(the  English  language).  And  no  doubt  many  of  the  new 
clergy  were  time-servers,  and  through  the  relaxation  of  a 
stricter  rule  of  life  became  lazy  and  self-indulgent,  and  justified 
such  gibes  as  this  : 

If  yon  fat  friar  be  a  poor  friar, 
Then  a  fat  desire  is  his  life's  rule  ; 

But  if  man  by  fat  to  Heaven  aspire, 
Then  the  lean  friar  is  a  lean  fool ! 

"  Yet  a  change  came  at  last.  There  grew  out  of  the  new 
clergy  many  true  Irishmen  who  had  the  love  and  respect  of 
the  entire  people."  Donough  O'Daly,  said  to  have  been 
Abbot  of  Boyle  in  the  beginning  of  the  thirteenth  century, 
was,  in  Dr.  Hyde's  opinion,  the  finest  religious  poet  of  old 
Ireland.  His  poem,  My  son,  remember,  taken  down  by 
Dr.  Hyde  from  the  lips  of  a  travelling  man  near  Belmullet, 
appears  to  have  been  kept  alive  by  oral  tradition  for  six 
hundred  odd  years.  It  is  composed  in  the  measure  called 
Ranneeacht,  the  quatrains  of  which  had  seven  syllables  in 
each  line,  and  were  end-rhymed  and  internally  rhymed  as  in 
these  specimen  stanzas  : — 

My  son,  remember  what  I  say, 

That  in  the  day  of  Judgment  shock, 

When  men  go  stumbling  down  the  mount, 
The  sheep  may  count  thee  of  their  flock. 


THE    RELIGIOUS    SONGS    OF    CONNACHT  125 

Shun  sloth,  shun  greed,  shun  sensual  fires 

(Eager  desires  of  men  enslaved), 
Anger  and  pride  and  hatred  shun, 

Till  Heaven  be  won,  till  man  be  saved. 

Here,  too,  is  an  excerpt  from  one  of  the  many  poems  dealing 
with  the  vanity  of  this  world  : 

Sleek  and  unhealthy  this  world  is, 

Where  "wealthy  "  means  wise  and  good  and  free, 
Where  if  a  man  is  only  poor, 

All  men  are  sure  a  fool  is  he. 


The  men  I  saw  they  saw  me  not, 

Or  if  they  saw  they  would  not  see. 
They  thought,  I  think,  I  was  not  I, 

But  something  different  from  me. 

The  religious  bards  of  the  seventeenth  and  eighteenth 
centuries  dropped  the  syllabic  metrification,  and  only  counted 
the  stressed  syllables  of  their  lines.  Their  themes  are  largely 
spiritual  dialogues,  such  as  those  between  Death  and  a  Sinner, 
or  the  Body  and  the  Soul.  In  these  life  is  treated  as  a 
pilgrimage,  and  Dr.  Hyde  points  out  that  those  of  them  of 
Munster  origin  are  more  Puritanical  in  spirit  than  the 
Connacht  examples.  For,  according  to  him,  "  it  is  not  to 
God's  vengeance  but  to  His  mercy  that  the  Connacht  man 
most  looks,  and  his  religious  poems  are  always  advising  good 
works  as  the  true  road  to  heaven,"  as  in  this  version  of  the 
original : 

Sister  to  sister,  brother  to  brother 
Speak  truth,  show  ruth  to  one  another  ; 
This  the  one  road  to  heavenly  profit ; 
This  Christ's  own  way  !     Oh,  stray  not  off  it. 


These  religious  songs  were  chiefly  composed  by  the  friars, 
regulars,  and  the  people  themselves,  not  by  the  parish  priests. 


126  IRISH   LITERARY   AND   MUSICAL   STUDIES 

Indeed,  the  latter  had  to  suffer  from  the  satire  of  the  former, 
as  in  the  following  example  : 

O  priest  of  the  hips  that  are  strong  and  portly  and  fine, 
Bring  in  my  soul  safe  in  the  shade  of  that  corpus  of  thine  ! 

But  another  bard  thus  makes  amends  to  his  parish  priest : 

When  you  lifted  your  voice  to  plead  in  Christ's  cause, 
You  made  sinners  to  pause,  you  so  looked  through  us, 

You  seemed  in  Kilcornin  that  Sunday  morning 
Like  an  angel  of  God  sent  to  us. 

Space  does  not  permit  of  dealing  with  Dr.  Hyde's  religious 
folk  tales :  a  Rip  Van  Winkle  tale  of  a  student  who  left 
college,  the  story  of  a  friar  driven  mad  by  love,  another  of  a 
mad  priest  who  wrought  miracles,  the  strange  legend  of  the 
Stone  of  Truth,  and  above  all,  a  unique  version  of  St.  Paul's 
Vision  contained  in  a  manuscript  between  two  hundred  and 
three  hundred  years  old,  picked  up  by  Dr.  Hyde  in  County 
Meath,  and  all  written  down  by  him  in  racy  Irish  vernacular. 

The  religious  poems  of  blind  Raftery,  who  also  wrote 
satires  on  the  Tithe  War,  the  establishment  of  National 
Schools,  and  the  Clare  Election  of  1828,  closed  the  series  of 
the  genuine  religious  Irish  poets ;  and  to  Raftery  Dr.  Hyde 
gives  the  palm  amongst  later  writers  on  the  score  of  taste, 
sweetness,  and  simplicity.  This  praise  is  borne  out  by 
extracts  from  several  of  his  longer  poems,  including  a  very 
remarkable  one  on  The  Cholera  Morbus^  and  another 
entitled  Raftery 's  Repentance.  It  is  only  right,  in  con- 
clusion, to  call  attention  to  the  interesting  series  of  prayers 
and  invocations,  not  only  of  duty  and  observance,  but  also 
concerning  such  special  acts  as  the  covering  up  of  the  hearth 
fire,  and  even  the  smoking  of  tobacco.  Dr.  Hyde  gives  many 
charms  against  diseases  and  pains,  such  as  whooping-cough, 
ague,  and  toothache.  A  comparison  of  these  Irish  charms 
with  those  in  Alexander  Carmichael's  delightful  Carmina 
Gadelica  shows  that  not  a  few  of  these  are  common  to  Ireland 


THE   RELIGIOUS   SONGS   OF   CONNACHT  127 

and  the  Western  Isles,  but  Mr.  Carmichael's  collection  is 
both  stranger  and  more  beautiful  than  Dr.  Hyde's.  It  may 
be  mentioned  in  conclusion  that  Dr.  Hyde  not  only  gives  the 
Irish  text  of  his  collection  on  the  left-hand  pages  of  his  book, 
and  the  English  version  on  the  right-hand  pages,  but  also 
adds  literal  translations  of  the  religious  poems  in  the  footnotes 
below  his  metrical  translations,  thus  enabling  the  Sassenach 
to  compare  the  one  with  the  other  for  critical  purposes. 


I2.S  IRISH    LITERARY    AND    MUSICAL   STUDIES 


CELTIC   NATURE   POETRY 

MATTHEW  ARNOLD'S  book  on  the  study  of  Celtic  Literature 
contains  perhaps  the  first  realisation  by  a  keen  and  wise 
English  critic  of  the  Celtic  feeling  for  Nature  as  distinguished 
from  that  of  the  Greek,  the  Roman  or  the  Teuton.  Matthew 
Arnold  has,  indeed,  coined  a  phrase  expressive  of  that 
Celtic  feeling  for  Nature  which  has  been  a  sentiment  for 
centuries,  and  which,  when  combined  with  the  feeling  for 
style  with  which  he  also  credits  the  Celt,  produces  in  Celtic 
prose  tales  and  verse  those  flashes  of  beautiful  expression  in 
description  of  Nature  which  he  terms  "  natural  magic." 
Byron,  as  he  points  out,  is  more  of  the  Celt  than  the  Saxon 
in  his  poetry  ;  and  no  wonder,  for  was  he  not  a  Gordon  of 
Highland  descent  ?  "  All  Byron's  heroes,"  he  writes,  "  are 
consumed  with  the  Celtic  passion  of  revolt,  so  warm- 
breathing,  puissant  and  sincere."  He  might  have  added 
that  Byron,  like  the  great  Irish  and  Welsh  poets,  nurses  his 
melancholy  and  exalts  his  spirits  in  companionship  with 
Nature,  rejoicing  in  its  sullen  solitudes  of  frowning  mountain 
top  and  moaning  sea,  and  again  exhilarated  by  the  dancing 
wave  or  the  leaping  lightning. 

Shakespeare,  he  considers  full  of  Celtic  magic  in  his 
handling  of  Nature.  Where  did  he  come  by  this  superlative 
gift?  Was  it  at  second  hand  through  Edmund  Spenser,  or 
his  friend  Dowland  the  Lutenist,  through  whom  he  is  said 
to  have  introduced  our  Irish  Puca,  as  his  Puck,  and  our 
Queen  Meabh,  as  his  Queen  Mab,  into  his  plays  ?  Or  was 
his  mother,  Mary  Arden,  who  came  from  the  Welsh  border 


CELTIC    NATURE    POETRY  129 

and  whose  kin  was  connected  with  the  Welsh  Tudor  court, 
of  Cymric  blood  ?  However  this  may  be,  Matthew  Arnold's 
fine  discrimination  between  Shakespeare's  Greek  and  Celtic 
Nature  notes  deserves  careful  weighing.  Thus  he  writes  : 

I  know  a  bank  whereon  the  wild  thyme  blows, 
Where  oxlips  and  the  nodding  violet  grows, 

strikes  a  Greek  note.     Then  again  in  his  : 

Look  how  the  floor  of  heaven 

Is  thick  inlaid  with  patines  of  bright  gold, 

we  are  at  the  very  point  of  transition  from  the  Greek  note 
to  the  Celtic  ;  there  is  the  Greek  clearness  and  brightness, 
with  the  Celtic  aerialness  and  magic  coming  in. 

Then  we  have  the  sheer,  inimitable  Celtic  note  in 
passages  like  this  : 

The  moon  shines  bright.     In  such  a  night  as  this, 
When  the  sweet  wind  did  gently  kiss  the  trees, 
And  they  did  make  no  noise,  in  such  a  night 
Troilus,  methinks,  mounted  the  Trojan  walls. 

***** 

.     .     .     In  such  a  night 
Stood  Dido,  with  a  willow  in  her  hand, 
Upon  the  wild  sea  banks,  and  waved  her  love 
To  come  again  to  Carthage. 

The  earliest  Celtic  Nature  poems  have  a  mystical  magic 
about  them  which  indicate  a  Druidical  influence,  or  at  any 
rate  reminiscences  of  Druidism,  as  will  be  seen  from  the 
following  specimens  which  represent  the  ancient  poetry  of 
four  of  the  Celtic  peoples :  the  Irish,  Welsh,  Cornish  and 
Breton.  Of  this  strange  Pantheistic  fragment  called  The 
Mystery  of  Amergin,  Dr.  Douglas  Hyde  states  it  is  his 
opinion  that  whilst  it  is  credited  to  Amergin,  one  of  the 
first  Milesian  princes  who  colonised  Ireland  many  hundreds 
of  years  before  Christ,  no  faith  can  be  placed  in  the  alleged 
date,  or  genuineness  of  this  poem,  but  that  it  is  of  interest 
"  because,  as  Irish  tradition  has  always  represented 

K 


130  IRISH   LITERARY   AND   MUSICAL   STUDIES 

Amergin's  verses  as  being  the  first  made  in  Ireland,  so  it 
may  very  well  be  that  they  actually  do  present  the  oldest 
surviving  lines  in  any  vernacular  tongue  in  Europe  except 
Greek." 

THE   MYSTERY   OF  AMERGIN. 

I  am  the  wind  which  breathes  upon  the  sea, 

I  am  the  wave  of  the  ocean, 

I  am  the  murmur  of  the  billows, 

I  am  the  ox  of  the  seven  combats, 

I  am  the  vulture  upon  the  rocks, 

I  am  the  beam  of  the  sun, 

I  am  the  fairest  of  plants, 

I  am  a  wild  boar  in  valour, 

I  am  a  salmon  in  the  water, 

I  am  a  lake  in  the  plain, 

I  am  a  word  of  science, 

I  am  the  point  of  the  lance  of  battle, 

I  am  the  God  who  creates  in  the  head  (i.e.,  of  man)  the 

fire  (i.e.,  of  thought). 

Who  is  it  who  throws  light  into  the  meeting  on  the  mountain  ? 
Who  announces  the  ages  of  the  moon  (if  not  I)  ? 
Who  teaches  the  place  where  couches  the  sun  (if  not  I)  ? 

The  early  Cymric  fragment  which  follows  is  of  unknown 
antiquity,  but  it  is  stated  to  be  as  old  as  the  sixth,  or  possibly 
the  fifth  century.  It  is  from  the  Black  Book  of  Caemartfien 
(1154-1189),  "that  remarkable  depository  of  early  Cymric 
Law,"  as  Mr.  William  Sharp  calls  it  in  his  note  to  the  poem 
in  his  wife's  Lyra  Celtica. 

THE  SOUL. 

It  was  with  seven  faculties  that  I  was  thus  blessed, 
With  seven  created  beings  I  was  placed  for  purification  ; 
I  was  gleaming  fire  when  I  was  caused  to  exist  ; 
I  was  dust  of  the  earth,  and  grief  could  not  reach  me  ; 
I  was  a  high  wind,  being  less  evil  than  good ; 
I  was  a  mist  on  a  mountain  seeking  supplies  of  stags  ; 
I  was  uiossoms  of  trees  on  the  face  of  the  earth. 
If  the  Lord  had  blessed  me,  He  would  have  placed  me  on  matter. 
Soul,  since  I  was  made 


CELTIC   NATURE   POETRY  131 

The  third  example  of  early  Celtic  Nature  poetry  of  the 
mystical  order  is  Merlin  the  Diviner,  which,  although  it  is  to 
be  found  in  the  old  Cornish  dialect,  is  really  an  ancient 
Breton  incantation.  The  translation  is  from  a  Memoir  of 
Thomas  Stevens,  the  author  of  the  following  version 
published  by  William  Rees,  Llandovery,  1849. 

MERLIN   THE   DIVINER. 

Merlin  !  Merlin  !  where  art  them  going 
So  early  in  the  day  with  thy  black  dog  ? 
Oi !  oi !  oi  !  oi !  oi  !  oi !  oi !  oi  !  oi  !  oi  ! 
Oi  !  oi !  oi  !  oi !  oi  ! 

I  have  come  here  to  search  the  way, 

To  find  the  red  egg  ; 

The  red  egg  of  the  marine  serpent, 

By  the  sea-side  in  the  hollow  of  the  stone. 

I  am  going  to  seek  in  the  valley 

The  green  water-cress,  and  the  golden  grass, 

And  the  top  branch  of  the  oak, 

In  the  wood  by  the  side  of  the  fountain. 

Merlin  !  Merlin  !  retrace  your  steps  ; 

Leave  the  branch  on  the  oak, 

And  the  green  water-cress  in  the  valley, 

As  well  as  the  golden  grass  ; 

And  leave  the  red  egg  of  the  marine  serpent, 

In  the  foam  by  the  hollow  of  the  stone. 

Merlin  !  Merlin  !  retrace  thy  steps, 

There  is  no  diviner  but  God. 

The  poetry  of  Nature  may  be  applied  in  two  senses  ;  it 
may  first  mean  "  the  work  of  the  poet,"  as  Wordsworth  puts 
it,  "  with  his  eye  on  the  object,"  and  using  all  his  ability  to 
draw  and  paint  a  lifelike  and  justly  coloured  picture  of  the 
scene  before  him.  The  power  to  do  this  does  not  imply 
more  than  accurate  observation  and  artistic  sensitiveness  to 
the  relation  between  what  is  presented  to  the  eye  and  the 
language  in  which  it  is  interpreted. 

The  second  view,  which  latterly  appears  to  have  become 


132  IRISH    LITERARY   AND   MUSICAL   STUDIES 

the  paramount  view  of  Nature  poetry,  is  that  of  Wordsworth 
and  his  school,  namely,  "  The  poetry  of  Nature  for  Nature's 
sake,"  or  as  it  has  been  well  put  by  Professor  Lewis  Jones 
(to  whom  in  conjunction  with  Mr.  Stopford  Brooke  belongs 
the  credit  of  a  fuller  development  of  Matthew  Arnold's 
theory),  "  the  poetry  which  seeks  to  interpret  Nature  in 
terms  of  mind  and  spirit,  the  attempt  to  divine  its  inner 
meaning  and  its  relation  to  the  mind  and  soul  of  man." 

The  history  of  the  poetry  of  Nature  in  the  world's 
literature,  adds  the  Professor,  "  is  the  history  of  the  develop- 
ment of  the  poetry  of  pure  natural  description  as  we  find  it 
in  Homer  into  the  reflective,  the  emotional,  the  philoso- 
phical treatment  of  Nature  of  which  Wordsworth  and  his 
disciples  are  the  recognised  modern  exponents." 

With  this  second  view  of  Nature  poetry,  the  Words- 
worthian,  Mr.  Ruskin  joins  issue.  As  he  put  it,  "  for  one 
who  can  see,  thousands  can  think.  To  see  clearly  is  poetry, 
prophecy,  and  religion  all  in  one."  This  introspective 
influence,  called  by  Ruskin  "the  pathetic  fallacy,"  tends, 
he  thinks,  to  a  withdrawal  into  self,  arising  from  solitary 
communion  with  Nature,  which  breaks  that  sympathy 
between  the  poet  and  his  fellow-men,  which  is  a  higher 
poetic  bond  than  that  between  him  and  Nature. 

"  Scott,"  according  to  Ruskin,  "  approaches  nearest  of 
modern  poets  to  the  Greek  attitude  towards  Nature.  He 
conquers  all  tendencies  towards  the  pathetic  fallacy  and 
instead  of  making  Nature  anywise  subservient,  does  not 
venture  to  bring  his  own  cares  and  thoughts  into  her  pure 
and  quiet  presence,  presents  her  in  her  simple  and  universal 
truth,  and  appears,  therefore,  at  first  shallower  than  other 
poets,  being  in  reality  wider  and  healthier." 

Commenting  upon  these  views  of  Ruskin  contained  in 
his  Modern  Painters,  Professor  Lewis  Jones  points  out  that 
"  the  history  of  the  rise  of  the  habit  of  regarding  Nature  as 
a  subject  in  itself  fit  and  adequate  for  poetry  "  is  paralleled 
by  that  of  the  growth  of  landscape  painting. 


CELTIC    NATURE   POETRY  133 

For  Ruskin  shows  that  mediaeval  landscape  was  made  so 
subsidiary  to  human  interest  that  "  the  workman  who  was 
first  led  to  think  lightly  of  natural  beauty  as  being  sub- 
servient to  human,  was  next  led  to  think  inaccurately  of 
natural  beauty  because  he  had  continually  to  alter  and 
simplify  it  for  his  practical  purposes."  He  thus  conven- 
tionalised Nature  to  such  a  degree  that  these  medieval 
landscapes  became  largely  artificial. 

Even  Chaucer  is  affected  by  the  same  vice  though  in  a 
limited  degree.  His  interest  in  Nature  is  not  as  consistent 
as  that  of  the  early  Celtic  poets,  or  indeed  the  mediaeval 
ones.  He  is  the  poet  of  April  and  May  and  their  inspira- 
tion to  man  through  the  reawakening  of  the  earth  to  life  in 
its  glory  of  new  green  and  the  voices  of  its  singing  birds, 
but  he  cannot  paint  an  autumn  or  winter  landscape  with  the 
sympathy  of  the  Irish  or  the  Welsh  bard.  Where  amongst 
his  tales  can  such  a  stark  presentment  of  the  rigours  of 
winter  be  found  as  this  song  attributed  to  Finn  MacCumhal, 
200  B.C.,  though,  of  course,  of  much  later  date.  My  verse 
rendering  could  hardly  be  more  literal  in  its  reproduction  of 
the  Irish  original  : 

Take  my  tidings  ! 

Stags  contend  ; 

Snows  descend— 

Summer's  end  ! 

A  chill  wind  raging  ; 
The  sun  low  keeping, 
Swift  to  set 
O'er  seas  high  sweeping. 

Dull  red  the  fern  ; 
Shapes  are  shadows ; 
Wild  geese  mourn 
O'er  misty  meadows. 

Keen  cold  limes  each  weaker  wing. 
Icy  times — 
Such  I  sing  ! 
Take  my  tidings  ! 


134  IRISH   LITERARY   AND   MUSICAL   STUDIES 

Though  there  is  a  great  deal  of  truth  in  it  I  cannot 
quite  agree  with  Professor  Lewis  Jones'  statement  that  in 
Spenser  "  Nature  is  but  the  background  to  his  splendid 
pictures  of  romantic  life  and  action,  and  that  the  environ- 
ment of  the  Faerie  Queen  is  that  of  Fairyland  "  ;  a  non-Celtic 
fairyland  I  presume  he  means — "the  atmosphere  vague, 
dreamy,  ethereal,  fading  away  into  the  verdurous  gloom  of 
forests  or  into  the  blue  mists  of  pleasant  glades  and  shadowy 
valleys."  I  regard  much  of  the  fairy  poetry  of  Spenser  to 
be  touched  just  by  the  same  Celtic  fairy  magic  which  suffuses 
many  of  the  border  ballads  and  takes  us  captive  in  The 
Ancient  Mariner,  whose  author,  as  his  grandson,  Mr.  Ernest 
Hartley  Coleridge,  has  pointed  out,  had  Celtic  blood  in  his 
veins.  No  one  who  has,  like  myself,  sat  under  Spenser's 
oak  by  the  Blackwater  where  the  poet  composed  much  of 
the  Faerie  Queen,  and  who  knows,  therefore,  the  landscape 
that  was  then  before  his  brooding  eyes  ;  and  no  one  who  is 
conversant  with  the  fact  that  Spenser  enjoyed,  in  translation, 
the  poems  of  the  Irish  bards  could  avoid  the  conclusion 
that  the  spell  of  Celtic  natural  magic  had  fallen  upon  Spenser. 
May  he  not  indeed  have  caught  inspiration  from  some  such 
verses  as  follow,  in  my  close  translation  from  an  Irish 
original  which,  to  use  Spenser's  own  words  in  praise  of  Irish 
bardic  poems,  "savours  of  sweet  wit  and  good  invention 
.  .  .  and  is  sprinkled  with  some  pretty  flowers  of  their 
natural  device  which  give  good  grace  and  comeliness  unto 
them." 

MIDIR'S   CALL  TO   EDAIN. 

[This  Midir  (the  Fairy  King),  like  the  rest  of  his  race,  was  an 
accomplished  magician  ;  and,  in  a  short  time  after  the  marriage  of 
Edain,  he  appeared  in  disguise  at  the  Palace  of  Tara.  He  asked  to 
play  a  game  of  chess  with  the  monarch,  Eochy  Fedleach,  and  won  the 
Queen  Edain  as  the  stake.  As  he  is  about  to  carry  her  off  he  thus 
addressed  her.] 

Queen  of  women,  oh  come  away  1 

Come  to  my  kingdom  strange  to  see  ; 
Where  tresses  flow  with  a  golden  glow, 
And  white  as  snow  is  the  fair  bodie. 


CELTIC   NATURE   POETRY  135 

Under  the  arching  of  ebon  brows, 

Eyes  of  azure  the  soul  enthral, 
And  a  speech  of  songs  to  the  mouth  belongs, 

And  sorrowful  sighing  shall  ne'er  befall. 

Bright  are  the  blooms  of  Innisfail, 

Green  her  forests  wave  in  the  west  : 
But  brighter  flowers  and  greener  bowers 

Shall  all  be  ours  in  that  country  blest. 

Can  her  streams  compare  to  the  runnels  rare, 

Of  yellow  honey  and  rosy  wine, 
That  softly  slip  to  the  longing  lip, 

With  magic  flow,  through  that  land  of  mine  ? 

We  roam  the  earth  in  its  grief  and  mirth, 

But  move  unseen  of  all  therein  ; 
For  before  their  gaze  there  hangs  a  haze, 

The  heavy  haze  of  their  mortal  sin. 

But  our  age  wastes  not,  our  beauty  tastes  not 

Evil's  apple,  nor  droops  nor  dies  ; 
Death  slays  us  never,  but  love  for  ever 

With  stainless  ardour  illumes  our  eyes. 

Then,  queen  of  women,  oh  come  away  ! 

Come  and  sit  on  my  fairy  throne, 
In  the  realm  of  rest  with  spirits  blest, 

Where  sin  and  sorrow  are  all  unknown. 

It  is  none  the  less  true,  as  pointed  out  by  the  Professor, 
that  pre-eighteenth  and  much  of  the  eighteenth  century 
poetry  in  the  English  language  suffers  from  too  strict  an 
interpretation  of  the  point  of  view  pithily  put  by  Pope  that 
"  The  proper  study  of  mankind  is  man." 

The  glory  and  wonder  of  mountain  and  forest  are  un- 
described  because  unknown,  but  the  petty  pastoral  aspects 
of  "  dawn "  and  "  bower "  and  "  grove,"  rhyming  with 
"lawn"  and  "flower"  and  "love,"  are  the  Nature  notes 
harped  upon  ad  nauseam  by  the  imitators  of  Theocritus 
and  Virgil  through  the  lips  of  their  conventional  shepherds 
and  shepherdesses. 


136  IRISH    LITERARY   AND    MUSICAL    STUDIES 

As  ancient  Ireland  was  covered  with  forest  its  invaders 
were  of  necessity  oversea  people  and  maintained  their 
position  from  points  of  vantage  upon  the  shores,  and  more 
especially  upon  islands  or  peninsulas  in  the  great  estuaries, 
still  keeping  in  touch  with  the  sea  and  its  suggestions.  This 
is  true  even  of  the  later  invaders  of  Ireland,  the.  Danes, 
who  never  moved  far  inland,  penetrating  no  further  than 
the  waters  of  the  great  rivers  and  lakes  would  allow 
them.  The  early  Irish  and  Irish-Danish  Sagas  are  there- 
fore permeated  with  the  joys  and  terrors  of  the  ocean. 
Here  is  a  portion  of  a  fine  early  sea-chant  (in  translation  by 
myself),  the  original  of  which  is  ascribed  to  the  celebrated 
poet  Rumann,  who  died  in  748.  It  was  first  published 
and  translated  by  Professor  Kuno  Meyer,  whose  version  I 
have  followed  : 

SONG  OF  THE   SEA. 

Huge,  huge  the  tempest  that  disorders 

All  the  Pleasant  Plain  of  Lir, 
Hurling  whirl-blasts  o'er  its  borders  ; 

At  the  winter's  onset  sheer, 

Piercing  us,  as  with  a  spear. 

*  *  *  *  * 

Rude,  tremendous  waves  are  tumbled 

Round  each  mighty  river  mouth  ; 
Wild,  white  Winter  has  us  humbled 

Past  Cantire  from  Alba  south  ; 

Torrents  quench  Slieve  Bremen's  drouth. 

***** 

Full  the  tide  to  overflowing  ; 

Pleasant  is  the  Home  of  Ships  ; 
Eddying  airs  the  sands  are  strewing 

Round  the  Estuary's  lips  ; 

Smooth  and  free  the  rudder  slips. 

But  when  the  early  waves  of  oversea  invasion  had 
ceased  to  break  upon  the  island,  and  the  successive  races 
of  conquerors  had  been  driven  inland  by  one  another  and 
had  become  more  or  less  united,  the  Irish  visionary  outlook 


CELTIC   NATURE   POETRY  137 

upon  the  sea  ceased,  and  the  joys  of  mountain  and  forest 
and  plain  overtook  the  hearts  and  minds  of  the  ancient 
Irish  people.  The  mystery  of  magic  stored  in  their 
imaginations  was  given  forth  again  and  united  them 
intimately  with  their  new  surroundings.  The  extraordinary 
physical  and  mental  vigour  inherent  in  a  race  which  had 
not  so  long  ago  faced  the  dangers  of  an  uncharted  ocean 
in  primeval  vessels,  incited  them  to  constant  deeds  of  arms 
and  a  not  less  constant  activity  in  the  chase  of  the  boar 
and  elk  and  red  deer  and  wolf,  which  were  then  indigenous 
in  Ireland. 

The  Celtic  love  of  Nature,  pre-eminent  in  Finn  and  his 
companion,  stamps  the  Fenian  tales  with  a  picturesque 
beauty  nearer  to  earth  because  out  of  sight  of  the  sea ;  but 
not  nearer  to  heaven,  because  the  other  world  of  this 
people  was  not  imagined  as  contained  in  a  sphere  outside 
their  own,  but  intimately  in  touch  with  it,  either  within  its 
green  hills  or  among  the  invisible  islands  which  surrounded 
its  shores.  As  Mr.  Brooke  well  puts  it :  "  The  great  beauty 
of  the  cloud-tragedies  of  storm,  the  gorgeous  sunrises  and 
sunsets,  so  dramatic  in  Ireland,  or  the  magnificence  of  the 
starry  heavens,  are  scarcely  celebrated.  But  the  Irish  folk 
have  heard  the  sound  of  the  wind  in  the  tree-tops  and  marked 
its  cold  swiftness  over  the  moor,  and  watched  with  fear  or 
love  the  mists  of  ocean  and  the  bewilderment  of  the  storm- 
driven  snow  and  the  sweet  falling  of  the  dew."  These  are 
fully  celebrated,  as  the  following  extracts  from  Irish  Gaelic 
poetry  will  show,  proving,  as  Mr.  Stopford  Brooke  points 
out,  "  that  the  great  and  small  aspects  of  Nature  are  so 
near  to  the  heart  of  the  Celtic  story-teller — as  they  are  not 
to  the  writers  of  the  Teutonic  and  Norse  Sagas — that,  even 
where  there  is  no  set  description  of  scenery,  an  atmosphere 
is  created  around  the  heroes  and  heroines  of  early  Irish 
heroic  romance,  that  all  other  European  early  literatures 
are  without." 

Thus  the  "  Three  Sorrows  of  Irish  Story-Telling,"  as  they 


138  IRISH    LITERARY   AND   MUSICAL   STUDIES 

have  been  called,  The  Fate  of  the  Children  of  Lir,  The 
Fate  of  the  Sons  of  Usnach,  and  The  Fate  of  the  Sons  of 
Turann,  tragedies  all  of  them,  are  interwoven  with  beautiful 
descriptions  of  natural  beauty  which  add  greatly  to  their 
enchantment.  And  the  same  is  true  of  the  wonderful  old 
tale  of  The  Pursuit  of  Dermid  and  Crania.  The  episodes 
descriptive  of  the  sufferings  of  the  Swan  children  upon  the 
three  Irish  Seas  and  of  their  return  to  their  father's  ruined 
palace  are  vivid  to  a  degree  in  their  realisation  of  the 
savage  aspects  of  Nature,  though  the  atmospheric  gloom  is 
now  and  again  suffused  by  returning  sunshine,  and  the  close 
of  the  tragedy  is  a  beautifully  hopeful  one. 

Here  is  a  fresh  translation  from  The  Fate  of  the  Sons 
of  Usnach,  who  carried  off  Deirdre,  King  Conor's  bride, 
to  Scotland,  where  she  was  wed  to  Naisi,  the  eldest  brother, 
and  where  the  four  abode  in  great  happiness  till  their  fatal 
return  to  Erin.  The  joy  in  the  life  of  Nature  exhibited  in 
this  farewell  to  Scotland  by  Deirdre  is  very  delightful  in 
the  original. 

DEIRDRE'S   FAREWELL  TO   SCOTLAND. 

A  land  well -beloved  is  yon  Easterly  Land, 
Alba  of  marvels,  from  mountain  to  strand, 
Thence  unto  Erin  I  had  not  been  faring, 
Were  Naisi  not  leading  me  still  by  the  hand. 

Beloved  is  Don  Fidga,  beloved  is  Dun  Finn, 
To  the  Fortress  above  'twas  delightful  to  win  ; 

Dear  is  the  Isle  where  the  thorn  bushes  smile, 
Very  dear  is  Dun  Sweeny,  without  and  within. 

Caill  Cuan,  Caill  Cuan,  where  Ainli  was  blest, 
Caill  Cuan,  Caill  Cuan,  for  you  I'm  distressed, 
May  was  in  prime,  when  we  fleeted  the  time, 
Naisi  and  I,  on  your  beautiful  breast. 

Glen  Lay,  O,  Glen  Lay,  where  we  hunted  all  day, 
Or  crouched  under  cliffs  in  the  summer  moon's  ray, 

Venison  and  fish,  and  badger  on  dish — 
That  was  our  portion  in  lovely  Glen  Lay. 


CELTIC   NATURE    POETRY  139 

Glen  Massan,  Glen  Massan,  of  blossoming  bowers, 
Tall  its  wild  garlic,  white  over  with  flowers. 

Joy-broken  sleep  upon  beds  grassy  deep, 
By  thy  River-mouth's  murmur,  Glen  Massan  was  ours  ! 

Glen  Etive,  Glen  Etive — ah  !  where  art  thou  now, 
And  the  bothy  I  built  on  thy  verdurous  brow  ; 

When  we  rose  with  the  dawn  and  looked  into  our  bawn, 
A  cattle-fold  sunny,  Glen  Etive  wert  thou  ! 

Glen  Urchain,  Glen  Urchain,  now  far  from  our  ken, 
O  that  was  the  straight  and  the  fair-shouldered  glen, 

There  in  the  flower  of  his  pride  and  his  power, 
Stood  Naisi  exulting,  my  monarch  of  men. 

Glen  da  Ruadh,  Glen  da  Ruadh,  hail  !  to  the  Chief 
Who  hath  thee  in  heritage,  lap  of  green  leaf! 

Thy  green  peak  behind,  sweet  to  hear,  hard  to  find, 
The  cuckoo  enchanting  goes  banishing  grief. 

Beloved  is  Draighen  above  a  firm  strand  ! 
How  soft  its  stream  purls  over  silver-pure  sand  ! 

Till  death  I'd  be  under  its  sky  of  blue  wonder, 
Were  Naisi  not  leading  me  home  by  the  hand. 

But  it  is  not  only  the  warrior  Irish  bards  who  delight  us 
with  such  glimpses  of  the  green  countryside,  of  the  heather- 
clad  hill;  the  monks  and  hermits  and  some  of  the  great 
ecclesiastics,  Columkille  and  the  Bishop-King  Cormac 
MacCullenann,  and  indeed  St.  Patrick  himself,  give  us 
beautiful  passages  of  Nature  poetry  in  the  midst  of  their 
sacred  verse.  Here  is  Dr.  Hyde's  charming  rendering  of 
St.  Columkille's  Farewell  to  Erin,  which  he  was  ordered 
to  quit  for  ever,  by  the  judgment  of  St.  Molaise,  owing  to 
his  responsibility  for  the  battle  of  Cooldrevin.  He  returned 
once,  however,  it  is  said,  to  save  the  Irish  bards  from 
expulsion  from  their  native  land  : 

COLUMCILLE'S   FAREWELL. 

Alas  for  the  voyage,  O  high  King  of  Heaven, 

Enjoined  upon  me, 
For  that  I  on  the  red  plain  of  bloody  Cooldrevin 

Was  present  to  see. 


140  IRISH    LITERARY   AND    MUSICAL   STUDIES 

How  happy  the  son  is  of  Dima  ;  no  sorrow 

For  him  is  designed, 
He  is  having,  this  hour,  round  his  own  hill  in  Durrow 

The  wish  of  his  mind. 

The  sounds  of  the  winds  in  the  elms,  like  the  strings  of 

A  harp  being  played, 
The  note  of  a  blackbird  that  claps  with  the  wings  of 

Delight  in  the  glade. 

With  him  in  Ros-Grencha  the  cattle  are  lowing 

At  earliest  dawn, 
On  the  brink  of  the  summer  the  pigeons  are  cooing 

And  doves  in  the  lawn. 

Three  things  am  I  leaving  behind  me,  the  very 

Most  dear  that  I  know, 
Tir-Leedach  I'm  leaving,  and  Durrow  and  Derry  j 

Alas,  I  must  go  ! 

Yet  my  visit  and  feasting  with  Comgall  have  eased  me 

At  Cainneach's  right  hand, 
And  all  but  thy  government,  Eire,  has  pleased  me, 

Thou  waterfall  land. 

The  sentiment  contained  in  the  last  two  lines  has  been 
reiterated  time  out  of  mind  since  the  Saint's  day,  and  we 
seem  almost  as  far  as  ever  from  being  able  to  vary  it 
satisfactorily. 

The  early  Welsh  poets,  Aneurin,  Taliesyn  and  Llywarch 
Hen,  were  warrior  bards,  yet  possessed  with  a  love  of 
Nature  so  absorbing  that  they  have  left  behind  them  entire 
poems  devoted  to  Nature,  some  of  them  running  to  con- 
siderable length,  such  as  Aneurin's  Months  and  Llywarch 
Hen's  Tercets  and  poem  on  Winter,  while  Taliesyn's 
Song  of  the  Wind  forms  a  considerable  episode  in  one 
of  his  longer  poems. 

Space  does  not  permit  of  our  quoting  more  than  a  few 
fragments  from  these  somewhat  mystical  and  distinctly 
gnomic  odes.  This  is  from  the  Tercets  of  Llywarch 
Hen,  a  sixth  century  Welsh  bard,  though  the  version  of  his 


CELTIC    NATURE    POETRY  141 

poem,  from  which  the  following  is  my  translation,  is  in 
language  of  a  much  later  date  : 

Set  is  the  snare  ;  the  ash  clusters  glow, 

Ducks  plash  in  the  pools  ;  breakers  whiten  below  ; 

More  strong  than  a  hundred  is  the  heart's  hidden  woe. 


The  brambles  with  berries  of  purple  are  dressed  ; 
In  silence  the  brooding  thrush  clings  to  her  nest, 
In  silence  the  liar  can  never  take  rest. 


Rain  is  without,  but  the  shelter  is  near  ; 

Yellow  the  furze,  the  cow-parsnip  is  sere, 

God  in  Heaven,  how  couldst  Thou  create  cowards  here  ! 

Rain  and  still  rain,  dank  these  tresses  of  mine  ! 
The  feeble  complain  of  the  cliff's  steep  incline  ; 
Wan  is  the  main  ;  sharp  the  breath  of  the  brine. 

Rain  falls  in  a  sheet ;  the  Ocean  is  drenched  ; 
By  the  whistling  sleet  the  reed-tops  are  wrenched  ; 
Feat  after  feat  ;  but  Genius  lies  quenched. 

Much  of  the  spirit  of  St.  Francis  animates  these  monkish 
and  hermit  poems.  There  is  a  tenderness  for  the  sufferings, 
not  only  of  the  half-frozen  wren  during  the  snowstorm,  but 
even  of  the  prowling  wolf  or  the  hovering  eagle. 

Not  even  in  Cuan's  forest  deep, 
To-night  the  shaggy  wolves  can  sleep, 
Nor  can  the  little  wren  keep  warm 
On  Lon's  wild  side  against  the  storm. 

The  ancient  eagle  of  Glen  Rye 
Gets  grief  from  out  the  storm-swept  sky, 
Great  her  misery,  dire  her  drouth, 
Famished,  frozen,  craw  and  mouth. 

But  if,  as  Matthew  Arnold  has  pointed  out,  Nature 
poetry,  in  a  sense  between  that  of  the  Greeks  and  that  of 
Wordsworth  and  his  school,  can  thus  be  proved  to  be  a 
Celtic  endowment,  from  whence  did  the  English  school  of 


142  IRISH   LITERARY   AND   MUSICAL   STUDIES 

Nature  poets  derive  its  inspiration  ?  Mr.  Stopford  Brooke 
and  Mr.  F.  T.  Palgrave  give  us  the  clue  which  I  hope  to 
follow  out  in  a  subsequent  essay.  The  connection  can  be 
traced  in  the  streams  of  Celtic  verse  which  mingled  them- 
selves with  English  poetry  :  the  first  a  legacy  of  the  Celtic 
blood  in  the  Lowlands  and  flowing  in  the  veins  of  the 
mediaeval  Scottish  poets,  Douglas  and  Dunbar ;  the  second 
having  its  source  in  the  Principality  and  represented  in  the 
writings  of  the  Welsh  poets,  George  Herbert  and  Henry 
Vaughan. 

Indeed,  in  a  paper  read  by  Professor  Palgrave  before 
the  Cymmrodorion  Society,  he  goes  so  far  as  to  write  :  "  It 
is  safe  to  affirm  that  of  all  our  poets  until  we  reach  Words- 
worth, including  here  Chaucer,  Spenser,  and  Milton, 
Vaughan  affords  decidedly  the  most  varied  and  the  most 
delicate  pictures  of  Nature ;  that  he  looked  upon  the 
landscape  both  in  its  fine  details  and  its  larger,  and,  as  they 
might  be  called,  its  cosmic  aspects,  with  an  insight  and  an 
imaginative  penetration  not  rivalled  till  we  reach  our  own 
century  (the  nineteenth)." 

But  behind  the  Scotch  Lowland  Nature  poets  of  the 
fifteenth  and  sixteenth  centuries,  and  behind  the  Welsh 
Nature  poets  of  the  seventeenth  century,  lie  the  gardens  of 
Irish  and  Welsh  and  Highland  mediaeval  bardic  poetry, 
tended  by  the  O'Dalys,  O'Carrolls,  O'Higgins  and 
O'Coffeys,  joint  Irish  and  Scotch  bards,  the  O'Husseys,  the 
Rhys  Gochs,  and  beyond  all,  as  the  laureate  of  Celtic 
Nature  poets,  Davydd  ap  Gwilym — true  descendants  of 
Finn  and  Ossian,  Aneurin  and  Llywarch  Hen. 


THE   PRETERNATURAL   IN   EARLY  IRISH 
POETRY 

THE  study  of  early  Irish  literature,  whether  professedly 
historical  or  romantic,  is  of  that  of  a  world  possessed  with 
preternatural  beliefs.  As  it  has  been  very  well  put  by 
Miss  Eleanor  Hull  in  her  work  on  Irish  Literature  :  * 

Everywhere  in  the  literature  which  the  old  Gael  has  produced  we 
find  the  mingling  of  the  actual  and  the  purely  imaginative  ;  in  his 
serious  annals  and  historical  tracts  he  surprises  us  by  the  perpetual 
intrusion  of  fairy  lore,  or  by  the  gravely  historic  importance  which  he 
attaches  to  the  genealogies  and  wars  and  settlements  of  the  gods  ;  his 
legal  decisions  and  ancient  lores  have  "a  thread  of  poetry  thrown 
round  them,"  and  his  official  verse  contains  the  geography,  the 
genealogies,  and  the  historical  traditions  of  Ireland.  .  .  .  The  accounts 
of  Brian  Boru,  early  in  the  eleventh  century,  are  tinged  with  fairy 
belief,  just  as  are  the  tales  of  Conaire  Mor  at  the  beginning  of  the 
Christian  era ;  nor,  when  Dr.  Geoffrey  Keating  comes  to  compile  a 
connected  history  of  Ireland  in  the  seventeenth  century,  does  he  show 
much  desire  to  sift  the  real  from  the  unreal. 

In  the  two  great  groups  of  Irish  romantic  tales,  those 
of  the  Red  Branch  Knights  and.  those  of  Finn  Mac- 
Cumhal  and  his  heroic  companions,  while  there  is,  no  doubt, 
an  underlying  historical  basis  of  fact,  kinship  with  the  gods 
involving  supernatural  powers,  and  then  companionship 
with  the  heroes  and  heroines  of  the  De  Danann  race  who 
had  passed  into  fairy  lands  across  the  seas  or  under  them 
and  the  earth,  are  treated  as  naturally  as  they  are  in 

*  A  Text-Book  of  Irish  Literature,  By  Eleanor  Hull  (M.  H.  Gill 
and  Sons,  Dublin). 


144  IRISH    LITERARY   AND   MUSICAL   STUDIES 

associations  of  a  similar  kind  in  the  Iliad  and  Odyssey. 
The  heroic  warfare  of  the  early  Irish  Gaelic  warriors,  their 
martial  equipment  and  their  mode  of  life  ring  true  to  the 
descriptions  by  Caesar,  Livy,  and  Tacitus  of  the  Britons  and 
Gauls  with  whom  the  Irish  chieftains  were  contemporary, 
according  to  the  traditional  dates  of  these  cycles  of  early 
Irish  romance. 

Yet  while  the  Red  Branch  heroes  claimed  descent  from 
the  Tuatha  De  Danann  gods,  and  the  preternatural  feats  of 
Cuchulain  and  his  companions  were  said  to  be  due  to  this 
divine  connection,  their  attitude  towards  these  ancestral 
deities  was  too  intimate  to  admit  of  acts  of  worship  towards 
them.  The  relations  between  these  gods  and  heroes 
resemble  those  that  subsisted  between  the  heroes  of  early 
Greece  and  their  gods  in  the  Trojan  war,  and  not  only 
do  the  gods  take  sides  for  or  against  Cuchulain,  as  the 
Greek  gods  did  for  or  against  Achilles,  but  we  even  find  the 
De  Danann  divinities  seeking  the  aid  of  the  Irish  heroes 
when  engaged  in  conflicts  with  one  another. 

As  suggested,  the  relation  between  the  defeated  De 
Danann  gods,  when  they  have  passed  into  fairyland,  and 
the  Fenian  heroes  is  of  a  still  more  intimate  kind.  These 
gods,  turned  fairies,  engage  the  Fenian  heroes  in  their  wars 
with  one  another,  spirit  them  off  under  a  spell  of  magic 
mist  into  underground  palaces,  from  which  they  are  released 
by  mortal  brother  warriors,  befriend  them  when  pursued  by 
their  enemies,  or  by  the  glamour  of  their  fairy  women  draw 
them  for  a  while  into  Tir  n'  an  Oge,  the  land  of  perpetual 
youth. 

As  Mr.  Stopford  Brooke  writes  in  his  fine  introduction 
to  his  son-in-law,  Mr.  T.  W.  Rolleston's  High  Deeds  of  Finn  : 

These  were  the  invisible  lands  and  peoples  of  the  Irish  imagination  ; 
and  they  live  in  and  out  of  many  of  the  stories.  Cuchulain  is  lured 
into  a  fairy  land,  and  lives  for  more  than  a  year  in  love  with  Fand, 
Manannan's  wife.  Into  another  fairy  land,  through  zones  of  mist, 
Cormac,  as  is  told  here,  was  lured  by  Manannan,  who  now  has  left  the  sea 


THE  PRETERNATURAL  IN  EARLY  IRISH  POETRY   145 

to  play  cm  the  land .  Oisin  flies  with  Niam  over  the  sea  to  the  Island  of 
Eternal  Youth.  Etain,  out  of  the  immortal  land,  is  born  into  an  Irish 
girl  and  reclaimed  and  carried  back  to  her  native  shore  by  Midir,  a 
prince  of  the  Fairy  Host.  Ethne,  whose  story  also  is  here,  has  lived  for 
all  her  youth  in  the  court  of  Angus,  deep  in  the  hill  beside  the  rushing 
of  the  Boyne. 

Observe  the  intimate  description  of  this  fairy  cavalcade, 
not  of  pigmy  warriors,  but  of  powerful,  heroic  fairy  princes 
as  they  pass  before  Laegaire  (Laery)  Mac  Crimthainn  when 
he  visits  the  Fairy  Realm  of  Magh  Mell.  They  might  be 
the  fiercest  of  Norse  warriors  devastating  the  Irish  coasts, 
but  for  the  arts  that  endear  them  to  the  Gael,  music  and 
poetry  and  their  kindred  skill  at  chess  playing.  Clearly 
they  are  of  the  stock  of  the  De  Dananns,  who,  upon  the 
Milesian  invasion,  descended  into  fairyland.  I  here  versify, 
in  old  Irish  measure,  the  prose  rendering  of  the  lyric  in 
the  Book  of  Leinster,  a  MS.  of  the  twelfth  century,  made  by 
Professor  Kuno  Meyer : 

THE   FAIRY    HOST. 

Pure  white  the  shields  their  arms  upbear, 

With  silver  emblems  rare  o'er-cast  ; 
Amid  blue  glittering  blades  they  go, 

The  horns  they  blow  are  loud  of  blast. 

In  well-instructed  ranks  of  war 

Before  their  Chief  they  proudly  pace  ; 

Ccerulean  spears  o'er  every  crest — 
A  curly-tressed,  pale-visaged  race. 

Beneath  the  flame  of  their  attack, 

Bare  and  black  turns  every  coast ; 
With  such  a  terror  to  the  fight 

Flashes  that  mighty  vengeful  host, 

Small  wonder  that  their  strength  is  great, 

Since  royal  in  estate  are  all, 
Each  Hero's  head  a  lion's  fell— 

A  golden  yellow  mane  lets  fall. 


146  IRISH   LITERARY   AND   MUSICAL   STUDIES 

Comely  and  smooth  their  bodies  are, 

Their  eyes  the  starry  blue  eclipse  ; 
The  pure  white  crystal  of  their  teeth 

Laughs  out  beneath  their  thin  red  lips. 

Good  are  they  at  man-slaying  feats, 

Melodious  over  meats  and  ale  ; 
Of  woven  verse  they  wield  the  spell, 

At  chess-craft  they  excel  the  Gael. 

More,  a  Munster  Princess,  was  carried  off  by  the  fairy 
host  in  her  youth,  but  escaped  from  them  and  became  the 
wife  of  Cathal,  King  of  Cashel.  Afterwards  her  sister  was 
similarly  abducted,  but  was  rescued  by  More,  who  recog- 
nised her  by  her  singing,  and  thus  advises  her  how  she  may 
free  herself  from  the  spells  of  the  Sidh  (Shee)  : 

Little  sister,  whom  the  Fay 

Hides  away  within  his  Doon,* 
Deep  below  yon  tufted  fern, 

Oh,  list  and  learn  my  magic  tune  ! 

Long  ago,  when  snared  like  thee 

By  the  Shee,  my  harp  and  I 
O'er  them  wove  the  slumber  spell, 

Warbling  well  its  lullaby. 

Till  with  dreamy  smiles  they  sank, 

Rank  on  rank  before  the  strain  ; 
Then  I  rose  from  out  the  rath 

And  found  my  path  to  earth  again. 

Little  sister,  to  my  woe 

Hid  below  among  the  Shee, 
List,  and  learn  my  magic  tune, 

That  it  full  soon  may  succour  thee. 

The  beautiful  old  air  to  which  More  of  Cloyne  is 
sung  is  of  the  sleep-disposing  kind,  under  which  lullabies 
and  fairy  music  are  classed.  It  formed  the  third  of  the 
three  Musical  Feats,  or  three  styles  of  playing,  which  gave 

*  A  fortified  residence. 


THE  PRETERNATURAL  IN  EARLY  IRISH  POETRY   147 

the  dignity  of  Ollamh,  or  Doctor  of  Music,  to  the  ancient 
professors  of  the  harp,  and  whose  origin  is  given  in  this 
weird  old  Folk  Tale. 

Lugh,  the  king  of  the  Tuatha  de  Danann  and  the 
Daghda,  their  great  chief  and  Druid,  and  Ogma,  their 
bravest  champion,  followed  the  Formorians  and  their  leader 
from  the  battle-field  of  Moyturah,  because  they  had  carried 
off  the  Daghda's  harper,  Uaithne  by  name. 

The  pursuers  reached  the  banquet  house  of  the  Fomorian 
chiefs  and  there  found  Breas,  the  son  of  Elathan,  and 
Elathan,  the  son  of  Delbath,  and  also  the  Daghda's  harp 
hanging  upon  the  wall.  This  was  the  harp  in  which  its 
music  was  spellbound  so  that  it  would  not  answer  when 
summoned  until  the  Daghda  evoked  it,  when  he  said, 
"  Come  Durdabla,  come  Coircethaircuir  (the  two  names  of 
the  harp)  .  .  ."  The  harp  came  forth  from  the  wall  then 
and  killed  nine  persons  in  its  passage.  And  it  came  to  the 
Daghda,  and  he  played  for  them  the  three  musical  feats 
which  give  distinction  to  a  harper,  namely,  the  Goltrec 
which,  from  its  melting  plaintiveness,  caused  crying,  the 
Gentree,  which,  from  its  merriment,  caused  laughter,  and  the 
Soontree,  which,  from  its  deep  murmuring,  caused  sleep. 

He  played  them  the  Goltree,  till  their  women  cried  tears  ; 
he  played  them  the  Gentree  until  their  women  and  youths 
burst  into  laughter ;  he  played  them  the  Soontree  until  the 
entire  host  fell  asleep.  It  was  through  that  sleep  that  they, 
the  three  champions,  escaped  from  those  Fomorians  who 
were  desirous  to  slay  them 

Observe  the  dignified  bearing  of  the  Fomorian  champions 
who  held  back  their  tears  and  laughter  when  their  women 
and  young  folk  gave  way  to  them,  and  could  only  be  won 
from  their  fell  purpose  by  the  fairy  music  of  the  De 
Danann  harp. 

Dr.  George  Petrie,  in  his  Ancient  Music  of  Ireland,  prints 
a  wonderful  old  fairy  lullaby,  sung  to  a  Gaelic  poem,  of 
which  Eugene  O'Curry  writes  :  "This  rare  and  remarkable 

L  2 


148  IRISH    LITERARY   AND    MUSICAL   STUDIES 

poem  contains  .  .  .  more  of  authentic  fairy  fact  and 
doctrine  than,  with  some  few  exceptions,  has  been  ever 
before  published  in  Ireland." 

Here  is  a  prose  rendering  of  the  original. 

O  Woman  below  on  the  brink  of  the  stream.     Sho  hoo  lo  ! 
Do  yon  understand  the  cause  of  my  wailing  ?     Sho  hoo  lo  ! 
A  year  and  this  day  I  was  whipt  off  my  palfrey.     Sho  hoo  lo  ! 
And   was  carried   into   Lios-an-Chnocain.     Sho   hoo  lo  !     Sho-heen, 
Sho  hoo  lo  ! 

There  is  here  my  beautiful  great  house.     Sho  hoo  lo  ! 
Abundant  is  new  ale  there  and  old  ale.     Sho  hoo  lo  ! 
Abundant  is  yellow  honey  and  bee's  wax  there.     Sho  hoo  lo  ! 
Many  is  the  old  man  tightly  bound  there.     Sho  hoo  lo  !     Sho  heen, 
etc. 

Many  is  the  curling  brown-haired  boy  there.  Sho  hoo  lo  ! 

Many  is  the  yellow-haired  comely  girl  there.  Sho  hoo  lo  ! 

There  are  twelve  women  bearing  sons  there.  Sho  hoo  lo  I 

And  as  many  more  are  there  beside  them.  Sho  hoo  lo  !     Sho-heen, 
etc. 

Say  to  my  husband  to  come  to-morrow.     Sho  hoo  lo  ! 

With  the  wax  candle  in  the  centre  of  his  palm.     Sho  hoo  lo  ! 

And  in  his  hand  to  bring  a  black-hafted  knife.     Sho  hoo  lo  I 

And  beat  the  first  horse  out  of  the  gap.     Sho  hoo  lo  1     Sho-heen,  etc. 

To  pluck  the  herb  that's  in  the  door  of  the  fort.     Sho  hoo  lo  ! 
With  trust  in  God  that  I  would  go  home  with  him.     Sho  hoo  lo  ! 
Or  if  he  does  not  come  within  that  time.     Sho  hoo  lo  ! 
That  I   will   be   queen  over   all   these  women.     Sho  hoo  lo  !     Sho- 
heen,  etc. 

"The  incident  here  clearly  narrated,"  writes  O'Curry,  "was 
believed  at  all  times  to  be  of  frequent  occurrence.  It  was  for  the  last 
sixteen  hundred  years,  at  least,  and  is  still,  as  firmly  believed  in  as  any 
fact  in  the  history  of  this  country — that  the  Tuatha  de  Danann,  after 
their  overthrow  by  the  Milesians,  had  gone  to  reside  in  their  hills  and 
ancient  forts,  or  in  their  dwellings  on  lakes  and  rivers — that  they  were 
in  possession  of  a  mortal  immortality — and  that  they  had  the  power  to 
carry  off  from  the  visible  world  men  and  women  in  a  living  state,  but 
sometimes  under  the  semblance  of  death. 


THE   PRETERNATURAL    IN    EARLY    IRISH    POETRY       149 

' '  The  persons  taken  off  were  generally  beautiful  infants,  wanted  for 
those  in  the  hill  who  had  no  children,  fine  young  women,  before 
marriage  and  often  on  the  day  of  marriage,  for  the  young  men  of  the 
hills  who  had  been  invisibly  feasting  on  their  growing  beauties — 
perhaps  from  childhood ;  young  men,  in  the  same  way,  for  the 
languishing  damsels  of  fairyland  ;  fresh,  well-looking  nurses  for  their 
nurseries.  .  .  ." 

This  poem  refers  to  all  the  classes  of  abducted  persons 
— abducted  young  men  now  grown  old,  comely  young 
men  and  maidens  and  married  women,  like  the  speaker, 
needed  for  nurses.  She  describes  a  period  before  wine  and 
whiskey  were  in  use,  and  therefore  more  than  three  hundred 
years  past,  in  Irish  of,  at  any  rate,  the  fifteenth  century. 
By  her  own  account  she  was  snatched  from  her  palfrey,  and 
must,  therefore,  have  been  a  woman  of  consequence.  She 
sees  from  within  Lios-an-Chnocain,  or  the  Fort  of  the 
Hillock,  a  neighbour,  perhaps,  washing  clothes  by  the  brink 
of  the  stream  which  runs  past  the  fort,  and,  in  the  intervals 
of  her  hush-cries  to  her  fairy  nursling,  she  gives  instructions 
to  her  friend  how  to  secure  her  freedom. 

The  bit  of  wax  candle  which  her  husband  was  to  carry 
in  the  centre  of  his  palm  would  be,  no  doubt,  a  candle 
blessed  on  Candlemas  Day,  and  the  black-hafted  knife  was 
the  only  mortal  weapon  feared  by  the  fairies. 

Its  use,  as  called  for  in  the  poem,  was  to  strike  the 
leading  horse  of  the  woman's  fairy  chariot  when  she  left  the 
fort  the  following  day,  and  thus  render  her  visible  to  her 
rescuing  husband,  who  was  then  to  possess  himself  of  the 
herb  that  grew  at  the  fort  door,  whose  magical  properties 
would  guard  her  from  recapture  by  the  fairies. 

The  next  early  Irish  poem  which  I  present  in  English 
verse,  is  taken  from  Professor  Kuno  Meyer's  Fianaigecht,  a 
hitherto  unedited  collection  of  Fenian  poems  and  tales,  and 
probably  belongs  to  the  ninth  century.  The  original  is  a 
very  remarkable  poem,  both  from  the  historical  and 
preternatural  point  of  view, 


150  IRISH   LITERARY   AND   MUSICAL   STUDIES 

THE  TRYST  AFTER  DEATH. 

Fothad  Canann,  the  leader  of  a  Connaught  warrior  band,  had 
carried  off  the  wife  of  King  Alill,  of  Munster,  with  her  consent.  The 
outraged  husband  pursued  them  and  a  fierce  battle  was  fought,  in 
which  Fothad  and  Alill  fell  by  each  other's  hands.  The  lovers  had 
engaged  to  meet  in  the  evening  after  the  battle.  Faithful  to  his  word, 
the  spirit  of  the  slain  warrior  kept  the  tryst  and  thus  addressed  his 
paramour  : 

Hush,  woman  1     Do  not  speak  to  me  ; 

My  thoughts  are  not  with  thee  to-night. 
They  glance  again  and  yet  again 
Among  the  slain  at  Feic  fight. 

Who'd  find  my  bloody  corpse  must  grope 

Upon  the  slope  of  Double  Brink  ; 
My  head  unwashed  is  in  the  hands 

Of  bands  who  ne'er  from  slaughter  shrink. 

Dark  Folly  is  that  tryster's  guide 

Who  Death's  black  tryst  aside  would  set ; 

To  keep  the  tryst  at  Claragh  made 
The  living  and  the  dead  are  met. 

Unhappy  journey  !     Evil  doom 
Had  marked  my  tomb  on  Feic  field, 

And  pledged  me  in  that  fateful  strife 
To  foreign  foes  my  life  to  yield. 

Not  I  alone  from  Wisdom's  way 

Have  gone  astray,  by  Passion  led ; 
Yet  though  for  thee  to  death  I  came, 

I  put  no  blame  on  thy  bright  head. 

Full  wretched  is  our  meeting  here 

In  grief  and  fear,  O  hapless  one  ! 
Yet  had  we  known  it  should  be  thus, 

Not  hard  for  us  our  sin  to  shun. 

The  proud-faced,  grey-horsed  warrior  band 

At  my  command  fought  faithful  on  ; 
Till  all  their  wondrous  wood  of  spears 

Beneath  Death's  shears  to  earth  had  gone. 


THE   PRETERNATURAL   IN    EARLY   IRISH   POETRY        151 

Had  they  but  lived,  their  valour  bright 
To-night  had  well  avenged  their  lord. 

And  had  not  Death  my  purpose  changed, 
I  had  avenged  them  with  my  sword. 

Theirs  was  a  lithe  and  blithesome  force, 
Till  man  and  horse  lay  on  the  mould. 

The  great,  green  forest  hath  received 
And  overleaved  the  champions  bold. 

The  sword  of  Domnall  drank  red  dew, 
The  Lugh  of  hosts,*  accoutred  well ; 

Before  him  in  the  River  Ford 

By  Death's  award  slim  Comgal  fell. 

The  three  fierce  Flanns,  the  Owens  three, 

From  sea  to  sea  six  outlaws  famed — 
Each  with  his  single  hand  slew  four, 

No  coward's  portion  thus  they  claimed. 

Swift  charged  Cu-Domna,  singling  out, 
With  gleesome  shout,  his  name-sake  dread. 

Down  the  Hill  of  Conflict  rolled, 

Lies  Flann,  the  Little,  cold  and  dead. 

Beside  him  in  his  bloody  bed 

Six  foes  death-sped  by  Flann  are  sleeping — 
Though  we  esteemed  them  feeble  ones — 

The  chaff  of  Mughirne's  Son's  red  reaping. 

Red  Falvey,  how  your  spear-strings'  play 

Amid  the  fray  made  manhood  melt ; 
Forchorb,  the  Radiant,  on  his  foes 

Seven  murderous  blows,  outleaping,  dealt. 

Twelve  warriors  in  the  battle  brunt 

Front  to  front  against  me  stood. 
Yet  now  of  all  the  twelve  are  left 

But  corses  cleft  and  bathed  in  blood. 

Then  I  and  Alill,  Owen's  son, 

To  shun  each  other's  arms  were  loath. 

With  drooping  sword  and  lowered  shield, 
Still  stood  the  field  to  view  us  both. 

*  A  De  Danann  hero  and  God. 


T52  IRISH    LITERARY   AND    MUSICAL    STUDIES 

Oh,  then  we  too  exchanged  our  spears, 
Heroic  peers,  with  such  dread  art, 

I  pierced  him  to  the  very  brain, 
He  me  again  unto  the  heart. 

Abide  not  on  the  battle-plain 

Among  the  slain,  in  terror's  toils  ; 

Shun  ghostly  converse  ;  home  with  speed 
Bear  thou  my  meed  of  manly  spoils. 

All  know  that  I  was  never  seen, 
Oh,  Queen,  apparelled  as  a  boor, 

But  crimson-cloaked,  with  tunic  white, 
And  belt  of  silver,  bright  and  pure. 

A  five-edged  spear,  a  lance  of  trust, 
Of  many  slaying  thrust  I  bore  ; 

A  shield  five-circled,  bronze  its  boss, — 
Firm  oaths  across  its  midst  they  swore. 

My  silver  cup,  a  shining  gem  ; 

Its  glittering  stem  will  flash  to  thee  ; 
Gold  ring  and  bracelets,  famed  afar, 

By  Nia  Nar  brought  over  sea. 

Then  Cailte's  brooch,  a  pin  of  luck, 
Though  small,  a  buckle  of  price  untold  ; 

Two  little  silver  heads  are  bound 
Deftly  around  its  head  of  gold. 

My  draught-board,  no  mere  treasure-stake, 
Is  thine  to  take  without  offence  ; 

Noble  blood  its  bright  rim  dyes, 
Lady,  it  lies  not  far  from  hence. 

\Vhile  searching  for  that  treasure  prized, 
Be  thou  advised  thy  speech  to  spare. 

Earth  never  knew  beneath  the  sun 
A  gift  more  wonderfully  fair. 

One  half  its  pieces  yellow  gold, 

White  bronze  of  mould  are  all  the  rest ; 

Its  woof  of  pearls  a  peerless  frame 
By  every  smith  of  fame  confessed. 


THE  PRETERNATURAL  IN  EARLY  IRISH  POETRY   153 

The  piece-bag — 'tis  a  tale  of  tales — 
Its  rim  with  golden  scales  enwrought. 

Its  maker  left  a  lock  on  it 

Whose  secret  no  want-wit  hath  caught. 

Small  is  the  casket  and  four-square, 

Of  coils  of  rare  red  gold  its  face, 
The  hundredth  ounce  of  white  bronze  fine 

Was  weighed  to  line  that  matchless  case. 

O'ersea  the  red  gold  coil  firm-wrought 
Dinoll  brought,  a  goldsmith  nice  ; 
Of  its  all-glittering  clasps  one  even 
Is  fixed  at  seven  bondwomen's  price. 

Tradition  tells  the  treasure  is 

A  masterpiece  of  Turvey's  skill ; 
In  the  rich  reign  of  Art  the  Good, 

His  cattle  would  a  cantred  *  fill. 

No  goldsmith  at  his  glittering  trade 

A  wonder  made  of  brighter  worth  ; 
No  royal  jewel  that  outdid 

Its  glory  hath  been  hid  in  earth. 

If  thou  appraise  its  price  with  skill, 
Want  shall  thy  children  ne'er  attack  ; 

If  thou  keep  safe  this  gem  of  mine, 
No  heir  of  thine  shall  ever  lack. 

There  are  around  us  everywhere 
Great  spoils  to  share  of  famous  luck  ; 

Yet  horribly  at  entrails  grim 

The  Morrigan's  dim  fingers  pluck. 

Upon  a  spear-edge  sharp  alit, 

With  savage  wit  she  urged  us  on. 
Many  the  spoils  she  washes  ;  dread 

The  laughter  of  Red  Morrigan. 

Her  horrid  mane  abroad  is  flung, 
The  heart's  well  strung  that  shrinks  not  back. 

Yet  though  to  us  she  is  so  near, 
Let  no  weak  fear  thy  heart  attack. 

*  A  large  acreage  of  land. 


154  IRISH   LITERARY   AND    MUSICAL   STUDIES 

At  dawn  I  part  from  all  that's  human, 
To  join,  O  woman,  the  warrior  band. 

Delay  not !     Homeward  urge  thy  flight ; 
The  end  of  night  is  nigh  at  hand. 

Unto  all  time  each  ghostly  rann 

Of  Fothad  Canann  shall  remain, 
My  speech  with  thee  reach  every  breast, 

If  my  bequest  I  but  obtain. 

Since  many  to  my  grave  will  come, 

Raise  thou  for  me  a  tomb  far-seen. 
Such  trouble,  for  thy  true  love's  sake, 

Wilt  thou  not  undertake,  O  Queen  ? 

My  corse  from  thee  must  earthward  pass, 

My  soul,  alas  !  to  torturing  fire. 
Save  worship  of  Heaven's  Lord  of  lords 

All  earth  affords  but  folly  dire. 

I  hear  the  dusky  ousel's  song, 

To  greet  the  faithful  throng,  outpour  ; 

My  voice,  my  shape,  turn  spectral  weak — 
Hush,  woman,  speak  to  me  no  more. 

The  relations  between  the  phantom  lover  and  his  para- 
mour are  here  very  finely  and  delicately  described.  The 
Queen  does  not  appear  to  be  terrified  by  his  appearance  in 
the  first  instance,  and  is  about  to  address  him  passionately, 
but,  like  Protesilaus,  when  permitted  to  appear  to  Laodamia, 
he  gravely  repels  her  affection,  deplores  the  madness  of 
their  passion,  and  yet  forgives  her  for  her  share  in  it.  He 
proudly  tells  her  of  the  details  of  the  battle  in  which  hero 
after  hero  fell,  until  he  and  her  husband,  King  Alill  of 
Munster,  encountered  one  another  and  perished  at  each 
other's  hands.  Again  growing  considerate  for  her,  he  warns 
her  of  the  dangers  of  the  battlefield,  and  above  all  cautions 
her  against  the  haunting  spirit  of  the  Morrigan,  one  of  the 
Battle  goddesses  or  demons  of  the  Gael.  Of  these  there 
were  three  weird  sisters,  Anann  or  Ana,  Bove  or  Bauv,  and 
Macha,  all  malignant  beings.  "  In  an  ancient  glossary 


THE   PRETERNATURAL   IN    EARLY    IRISH   POETRY       155 

quoted  by  Stokes,"  writes  Dr.  Joyce  in  his  Social  History  of 
Ireland,  "  Macha's  mast-food  is  said  to  be  the  heads  of  men 
slain  in  battle."  The  accounts  of  these  battle  furies  are 
somewhat  confused,  but  they  were  all  called  Morrigan  and 
Bauv.  Morrigan  means  great  queen ;  Bauv  did  not  appear, 
as  a  rule,  in  queenly  shape,  but  as  a  carrion  crow  fluttering 
over  the  heads  of  the  combatants.  Bauv  was  the  war 
goddess  among  the  ancient  Gauls  from  whom  her  legend 
was  brought  to  Ireland.  Strangely  enough,  not  many  years 
ago,  a  small  pillar  stone  was  found  in  France  with  an 
interesting  votive  inscription  upon  it,  addressed  to  this 
goddess  under  the  name  of  Cathu  (Irish  Cath  =  battle) 
bodvae  (the  Irish  Bauv). 

Fothad  Canann  goes  on  to  tell  the  queen  where  his 
special  accoutrements,  weapons,  and  treasures  of  jewelry  are 
to  be  found  on  the  battlefield,  and  he  enters  into  a  curiously 
close  description  of  his  draught-board,  a  very  masterpiece  of 
art.  He  ends  his  conversation  by  promising  that  she  shall 
be  famous  to  all  time  for  these  ghostly  ranns  or  verses 
addressed  to  her,  if  she  will  raise  him  a  worthy  tomb — a 
far-seeing  monument,  for  the  sake  of  her  love  to  him. 
There  follows  a  final  Christian  touch,  not  improbably  one 
of  those  Monkish  interpolations,  introduced  at  the  close 
of  Pagan  poems  in  order  to  justify  their  circulation,  but 
contradicted  by  the  phantom's  previous  statement,  that  he 
was  returning  not  to  the  fires  of  Purgatory,  but  to  the 
companionship  of  the  warrior  band. 

We  have  dealt  with  cases  of  reincarnation  as  described 
in  the  old  Pagan  Irish  poems.  Here  is  an  instance  of  a 
kindred  character,  but  not  one  of  transmigration  of  soul. 
This  remarkable  poem,  of  which  a  translation  follows,  refers 
to  the  rejuvenations  of  an  old  Irish  princess,  more  fortunate 
than  Tithonus,  who  received  the  fateful  gift  of  immortality 
only  to  wither  slowly  in  the  arms  of  the  Goddess  Aurora. 
This  princess,  on  the  contrary,  was  dowered  with  seven 
periods  of  youth  and  so,  during  her  Pagan  period,  was 


156  IRISH    LITERARY   AND   MUSICAL   STUDIES 

wedded  to  one  prince  of  the  Gael  after  another.  The  poem, 
uttered  by  her,  expresses,  however,  in  the  language  of  the 
late  tenth  century  her  misery  when  she  finds  that  her  youth 
is  to  be  renewed  no  more,  and  her  final  position  is  thus 
quaintly  described  in  the  prose  introduction  to  this  lament 
of  the  old  woman  of  Beare,  or  Beara,  from  which  The 
Cf  Sullivan  Bear  takes  his  title,  and  round  whose  shores 
the  British  fleet  anchors  in  the  great  harbour  of  Berehaven. 

THE  LAMENT  OF  THE   OLD  WOMAN   OF   BEARE.* 

The  reason  why  she  was  called  the  Old  Woman  of  Beare  was  that 
she  had  fifty  foster  children  in  Beare.  She  had  seven  periods  of  youth, 
one  after  another,  so  that  every  man  who  had  lived  with  her  came  to 
die  of  old  age,  and  her  grandsons  and  great-grandsons  were  tribes  and 
races.  For  a  hundred  years  she  wore  the  veil  which  Cummin  had 
blessed  upon  her  head.  Thereupon  old  age  and  infirmity  came  upon 
her.  'Tis  then  she  said  : 

Ebb-tide  to  me  as  of  the  sea  ; 

Reproaches  free  old  age  o'ertake  ; 
Full  limbs  and  bosom  favours  follow, 

The  lean  and  hollow  they  forsake. 

The  Beldame  I  of  Beare  confessed, 

Who  once  went  dressed  in  garments  fine  ; 

111  Fortune's  miserable  mock, 

Not  even  a  cast-off  smock  is  mine. 

At  riches  now  girls'  eyes  grow  bright, 

Not  at  the  sight  of  heroes  bold  ; 
But  when  we  lived,  ah  then,  ah  then, 

We  gave  our  love  to  men,  not  gold. 

Swift  chariots  glancing  in  the  sun, 

Swift  steeds  that  won  the  bright  award — 

Their  day  of  plenty  hath  gone  by, 
My  blessings  lie  with  their  dead  lord. 

*  Founded  on  Professor  Kuno  Meyer's  prose  version  of  this  tenth 
century  Irish  poem.  The  introductory  words  are  his  translation  from 
the  early  Irish. 


THE  PRETERNATURAL  IN  EARLY  IRISH  POETRY   157 

My  body  bends  its  bitter  load 

Towards  the  abode  ordained  for  all, 
And  when  He  deems  my  days  are  done, 

Then  let  God's  Son  my  soul  recall. 

My  arms,  if  now  their  shape  is  seen, 

Are  bony,  lean,  discoloured  things  ; 
Yet  once  they  fondled  soft  and  warm, 

Form  after  form  of  gallant  kings. 

To-day,  alas,  when  they  are  seen, 

They  are  such  lean,  long  skeletons, 
'Twere  folly  now  to  cast  their  wrecks 

Around  the  necks  of  fair  kings'  sons. 

When  maidens  hail  the  Beltane  bright 
With  footsteps  light  and  laughter  sweet, 

Then  unto  me,  a  withered  crone, 
The  loud  lament  alone  is  meet. 

No  sheep  are  for  my  bridals  slain, 
None  now  are  fain  for  converse  kind  ; 

My  locks  of  gold,  turned  leaden  pale, 
Lie  hid  a  wretched  veil  behind, 

I  do  not  deem  it  ill  at  all, 

A  mean  white  veil  should  thrall  them  so  ; 
With  ribbons  gay  they  once  were  dressed 

Above  the  good  ale's  festal  flow. 

The  Stone  of  Kings  on  Femer  fair, 

Great  Ronan's  Chair  *  in  Bregon's  bound — 

'Tis  long  since  storms  upon  them  prey, 
Their  masters'  tombs  decay  around. 

The  Great  Sea's  waters  talk  aloud, 

Winter  arises  proud  and  grey  ; 
Oh,  Fermuid,  mighty  son  of  Mugh,f 

I  shall  not  meet  with  you  to-day. 

*  Inauguration  stones,  or  stone  chairs,  on  which  the  candidate  king 
or  prince  stood  to  receive  the  wand  of  office,  "  a  straight  white  wand, 
a  symbol  of  authority  and  also  an  emblem  of  what  his  conduct  and 
judicial  decisions  should  be — straight  and  without  a  stain." — Dr.  Joyce, 
Social  History  of  Ireland,  Book  I,  p.  46. 

t  One  of  her  princely  lovers. 


158  IRISH    LITERARY   AND   MUSICAL   STUDIES 

I  know  what  they  are  doing  now  ; 

They  row  and  row  and  row  across 
The  rustling  reeds  of  Alma's  Ford — 

Death-cold  each  Lord,  alas,  my  loss  ! 

'Tis,  "  Oh  my  God  !  and  Ochonee  ! " 
To-day  to  me,  whate'er  my  fate, 

Even  in  the  sun  my  cloak  I  wear  ; 
Time  shall  not  now  repair  my  state. 

Youth's  summer  sweet  in  which  we  were 
And  autumn  fair  I  too  have  spent ; 

But  winter's  overwhelming  brow 
Is  o'er  me  now  in  anger  bent. 

Amen  !     So  be  it !     Woe  is  me  ! 

Each  acorn  from  its  tree  takes  flight  ; 
After  the  banquet's  joyful  gleam, 

Can  I  esteem  a  prayer-house  bright  ? 

I  had  my  day  with  kings  indeed, 
Rich  wine  and  mead  would  wet  my  lip, 

But  all  among  the  shrivelled  hags 
\Vhey-water  now  in  rags  I  sip. 

Upon  my  cloak  my  locks  stream  white, 
My  head  is  light,  my  memory  numb  ; 

Through  cheek  and  chin  grey  bristles  grow, 
A  beldame  lo  !  I  am  become. 

Seven  flood-waves  over  me  were  cast, 
Six  ebb-tides  passed  into  my  blood  ; 

Too  well  I  know,  too  well  indeed, 
The  seventh  ebb  will  lead  no  flood. 

The  flood-wave  never  more  shall  stir 
With  laughing  whirr  my  kitchen  now 

Many  my  comrades  in  the  gloom, 
But  Death's  black  doom  is  on  each  brow 

Isles  of  the  Sea  to  you  'tis  sweet 
Again  to  greet  the  flooding  brine  ; 

After  my  seventh  ebb  I  know 

Time's  joyous  flow  shall  not  be  mine. 


THE  PRETERNATURAL  IN  EARLY  IRISH  POETRY   159 

The  smallest  place  that  meets  my  eyes 

I  cannot  recognise  aright. 
What  was  in  flood  with  flowing  store 

Is  all  in  ebb  before  my  sight. 

Miss  Hull  reminds  us,  when  dealing  with  the  literature  of 
vision,  of  Caesar's  statement  in  Book  IV,  chapter  15,  of  the 
Gallic  War,  that  "  one  of  the  chief  convictions  which  the 
Druids  of  Gaul  desired  to  instil,  is  that  souls  do  not  perish, 
but  pass,  after  death,  from  one  body  to  another ;  and  they 
think  this  is  the  greatest  incentive  to  valour,  as  it  leads  men 
to  despise  the  fear  of  death." 

Undoubtedly  there  is  much  evidence  in  early  Irish 
mythology  of  transmigration  from  form  to  form :  thus  the 
De  Danann  hero-god,  Lugh,  was  re-born  in  Cuchulain,  and 
Diarmuid  is  a  reincarnation  in  Ossianic  times  of  Angus 
the  De  Danann  love-god,  whose  "love  spot"  or  beauty 
fascinated  all  women. 

There  is  this  difference,  however,  between  the  teaching 
of  the  Gaulish  Druids  as  observed  by  Caesar  and  that  con- 
tained in  early  Irish  Druidic  influences.  There  was  no 
belief  in  a  life  beyond  the  grave  in  ancient  pagan  Ireland. 
As  Miss  Hull  puts  it : 

The  mortals  who  went  into  Magh  Mell,  or  the  Irish  pagan 
Elysium,  did  not  go  there  by  means  of,  or  after  death,  they  went  as 
visitors,  who  could  at  will  return  again  to  earth.  The  distinction  is 
essential.  Until  after  the  introduction  of  Christian  teaching,  the  idea 
of  a  life  after  death  seems  to  have  been  non-existent.  It  is  quite 
different  when  we  come  to  the  late  dialogues  between  Oisin  and 
St.  Patrick,  which  makes  up  a  large  portion  of  the  Ossianic  poetical 
literature.  Though  anti-Christian  in  tone,  Oisin  has  so  far  adopted 
the  standpoint  of  the  Saint  that  he  admits  the  continued  existence 
of  Fionn  and  his  warriors  after  death,  the  point  of  contention  between 
them  being  where  and  under  what  circumstances  this  existence  is 
carried  on.  Such  a  line  of  argument  would  have  been  impossible  in 
pre-Christian  times,  when  the  idea  of  a  future  existence  had  not  yet 
been  conceived  of. 

Manannan  Mac  Lir,  himself  the  son  of  a  Celtic  sea  deity, 
after  whom  the  ocean  is  sometimes  called  the  Plain  of  Lir — 


l6o  IRISH    LITERARY   AND    MUSICAL   STUDIES 

and  who  probably  is  the  shadowy  origin  of  Shakespeare's 
King  Lear — was  the  King  of  the  Land  of  Promise  of  Sorcha 
("  clearness  "),  or  Magh  Mell  the  "  Honey  Plain."  Thither 
Bran,  who  is  connected  with  Manannan  in  the  oversea 
voyage  myths,  sails  under  the  influence  of  a  beautiful 
princess  who  describes  the  marvellous  land  in  the  delightful 
strains  of  which  an  original  verse  translation  is  subjoined. 
This  passage  appears  as  a  poem  contained  in  the  prose 
tale  called  The  Voyage  of  Bran  Son  of  Febal  to  the  Land  of 
the  Living.  The  whole  of  the  tale  and  interspersed  poems 
have  been  published  under  the  editorship  of  Professor  Kuno 
Meyer,  by  David  Nutt.  It  was  probably  first  written  down 
early  in  the  eighth,  perhaps  late  in  the  seventh  century. 

THE   ISLES   OF  THE   HAPPY. 

Once  when  Bran,  son  of  Feval,  was  with  his  warriors  in  his  royal 
fort,  they  suddenly  saw  a  woman  in  strange  raiment  upon  the  floor  of 
the  house.  No  one  knew  whence  she  had  come  or  how  she  had 
entered,  for  the  ramparts  were  closed.  Then  she  sang  these  quatrains 
to  Bran  while  all  the  host  were  listening  : 

A  branch  I  bear  from  Evin's  apple  trees 

Whose  shape  agrees  with  Erin's  orchard  spray  ; 

Yet  never  could  her  branches  best  belauded 
Such  crystal-gauded  bud  and  bloom  display. 

There  is  a  distant  Isle,  deep  sunk  in  shadows, 
Sea  horses  round  its  meadows  flash  and  flee  ; 

Full  fair  the  course,  white-swelling  waves  enfold  it, 
Four  pedestals  uphold  it  o'er  the  sea. 

All  eyes'  delight,  that  Plain  of  Silver  glorious, 

Whereon  victorious  hosts  with  joy  engage, 
Swift  coracle  and  chariot  keen  contending, 

A  race  unending  run  from  age  to  age. 

White  the  bronze  pillars  that  this  Fairy  Curragh,* 

The  Centuries  thorough,  coruscating  prop. 
Through  all  the  World  the  fairest  land  of  any 

Is  this  whereon  the  many  blossoms  drop. 

*  Plain,  as  the  Curragh  of  Kildare. 


THE    PRETERNATURAL    IN    EARLY    IRISH    POETRY        I 6 I 

And  in  its  midst  an  Ancient  Tree  forth  flowers, 
Whence  to  the  Hours  beauteous  birds  outchime  ; 

In  harmony  of  song,  with  fluttering  feather, 
They  hail  together  each  new  birth  of  Time. 

And  through  the  Isle  smile  all  glad  shades  of  colour, 

No  hue  of  dolour  mars  its  beauty  lone. 
'Tis  Silver  Cloud  Land  that  we  ever  name  it, 

And  joy  and  music  claim  it  for  their  own. 

Not  here  are  cruel  guile  or  loud  resentment, 

But  calm  contentment,  fresh  and  fruitful  cheer  : 

Not  here  loud  force  or  dissonance  distressful, 
But  music  melting  blissful  on  the  ear. 

No  grief,  no  gloom,  no  death,  no  mortal  sickness, 
Nor  any  weakness  our  sure  strength  can  bound  ; 

These  are  the  signs  that  grace  the  race  of  Evin  ; 
Beneath  what  other  heaven  are  they  found  ? 

Then  mayhap  Silver  Land  shall  meet  thy  vision, 

Where  sea  gems  for  division  leap  to  land. 
The  monstrous  Deep  against  the  steep  is  dashing  ; 

His  mane's  hoar  lashing  whitens  all  the  strand. 

Great  wealth  is  his  and  bright-hued  treasure-showers, 
Who  links  his  hours,  Land  of  Peace,  with  thine. 

To  strains  of  sweetest  music  is  he  listening, 

He  drains  from  glistening  cups  the  choicest  wine. 

Pure  golden  chariots  on  the  Sea  Plain  fleeting 

Give  joyful  greeting  to  the  golden  Sun  ; 
Pure  silver  chariots  on  the  Plain  of  Sporting, 

With  chariots  of  pure  bronze  consorting,  run. 

Swift  steeds  are  on  the  sward  there,  golden  yellow, 
While  crimson  steeds  to  fellow  them  are  seen  ; 

And  some  with  coats  of  sleek  far-shining  azure 
Stretch  at  full  measure  o'er  the  racing  green. 

A  Hero  fair,  from  out  the  dawn's  bright  blooming, 
Rides  forth,  illuming  level  shore  and  flood  ; 

The  white  and  seaward  plain  he  sets  in  motion, 
He  stirs  the  ocean  into  burning  blood. 

M 


1 62  IRISH    LITERARY   AND    MUSICAL   STUDIES 

A  host  across  the  clear  blue  sea  comes  rowing, 
Their  prowess  showing,  till  they  touch  the  shore ; 

Thence  seek  the  Shining  Stone  *  where  Music's  measure 
Prolongs  the  pleasure  of  the  pulsing  oar. 

It  sings  a  strain  to  all  the  host  assembled  ; 

That  strain  untired  has  trembled  through  all  time  ! 
It  swells  with  such  sweet  choruses  unnumbered, 

Decay  and  Death  have  slumbered  since  its  chime. 

Evna  of  many  shapes,  beside  the  waters, 

Thy  thousand  daughters  many-hued  to  see — 

How  far  soe'er  or  near  the  circling  spaces 
Of  sea  and  sand  to  their  bright  faces  be — 

If  even  one  approach  the  music  thrilling 
Of  wood-birds  trilling  to  thy  Land  of  Bliss, 

Straightway  the  beauteous  band  is  all  resorting 
Unto  the  Plain  of  Sporting,  where  he  is. 

Thus  happiness  with  wealth  is  o'er  us  stealing, 
And  laughter  pealing  forth  from  every  hill. 

Yea  !  through  the  Land  of  Peace  at  every  Season 
Pure  Joy  and  Reason  are  companions  still. 

Through  all  the  Isle's  unchanging  summer  hours 

There  showers  and  showers  a  stream  of  silver  bright ; 

A  pure  white  cliff  that  from  the  breast  of  Evin 
Mounts  up  to  Heaven  thus  assures  her  light. 

Thrice  fifty  distant  Isles  of  fame  to  Westward, 
Seaward  or  coastward  in  the  ocean  lie  ; 

Larger  those  Isles  by  twice  or  thrice  than  Erin, 
And  many  marvels  therein  meet  the  eye. 

Long  ages  hence  a  Wondrous  Child  and  Holy, 
Yet  in  estate  most  lowly  shall  have  birth  ; 

Seed  of  a  Woman,  yet  whose  Mate  knows  no  man — 
To  rule  the  thousand  thousands  of  the  earth. 

His  sway  is  ceaseless ;  'twas  His  love  all-seeing 
That  Earth's  vast  being  wrought  with  perfect  skill. 

All  worlds  are  His  ;  for  all  His  kindness  cares  ; 
But  woe  to  all  gainsayers  of  His  Will. 

*  An  Irish  vocal  Memnon. 


THE   PRETERNATURAL    IN    EARLY    IRISH   POETRY        163 

The  stainless  heavens  beneath  His  Hands  unfolded, 

He  moulded  Man  as  free  of  mortal  stain. 
And  even  now  Earth's  sin-struck  sons  and  daughters 

His  Living  Waters  can  make  whole  again. 

Not  unto  all  of  you  is  this  my  message 
Of  marvellous  presage  at  this  hour  revealed. 

Let  Bran  but  listen  from  Earth's  concourse  crowded 
Unto  the  shrouded  wisdom  there  concealed. 

Upon  a  couch  of  languor  lie  not  sunken, 

Beware  lest  drunkenness  becloud  thy  speech  ! 

Put  forth,  O  Bran,  across  the  far  clear  waters, 
And  Evin's  daughters  haply  thou  may'st  reach. 

It  will  be  seen  at  the  end  of  this  poem  that  Christian 
influences  were  being  obtruded  upon  Pagan  thought. 
Everything  points  to  a  pre-Christian  origin  of  this  tale.  But 
St.  Patrick  and  his  successors  evidently  enjoyed  these  old 
Pagan  tales,  realising  their  beauty  and  the  nobility  of  thought 
which  often  characterises  them,  and  pressing  them  into  the 
service  of  the  Church  by  means  of  such  interpolated 
passages  as  the  above  poem  contains. 

As  a  matter  of  fact  the  Pagan  over-sea  voyage  idea  was 
so  deeply  rooted  in  the  Irish  mind  that  the  Monkish  writers 
readily  took  it  over  and  converted  it  to  their  own  purposes, 
and  we  thus  pass  on  to  semi-Christian  visions,  such  as  the 
well-known  Voyage  of  Maddune,  which  Tennyson,  at  my 
suggestion,  made  his  own,  after  studying  the  first  complete 
English  version  of  it  given  by  Dr.  Joyce  in  his  Old  Celtic 
Romances,  Other  voyages  of  the  kind  are  The  Navigation 
of  the  Sons  of  O'Corra,  and  the  Voyage  of  Snedgus  and 
Mac  Riagla.  The  legend  of  St.  Brendan,  as  told  in  Irish 
literature,  differs  both  from  the  Latin  version  and  those  of 
France  and  Germany.  Matthew  Arnold's  poem  is  based  on 
these  foreign  versions  and  introduces  the  incident  of  Judas 
Iscariot  being  allowed  out  of  Hell  for  one  day  in  the  year, 
owing  to  an  act  of  humanity  when  on  earth.  The  following 
curious  hymn  of  St.  Philip,  which  must  be  my  last  poetical 


M    2 


164  IRISH    LITERARY   AND   MUSICAL   STUDIES 

example  of  early  Irish  Vision  Literature,  is  an  instance  of 
the  influence  of  pre-Christian  Wonderland.  I  have  translated 
it  from  the  Liber  Hymnorwn,  edited  by  Professor  Atkinson 
and  Bishop  Bernard  : 

THE   HYMN  OF  ST.   PHILIP. 
From  the  Early  Irish. 

Philip  the  Apostle  holy 

At  an  Aonach  *  once  was  telling 
Of  the  immortal  birds  and  shapely 

Afar  in  Inis  Eidheand  dwelling. 

East  of  Africa  abiding 

They  perform  a  labour  pleasant ; 
Unto  earth  has  come  no  colour 

That  on  their  pinions  is  not  present. 

Since  the  fourth  Creation  morning 

When  their  God  from  dust  outdrew  them, 

Not  one  plume  has  from  them  perished, 
And  not  one  bird  been  added  to  them. 

Seven  fair  streams  with  all  their  channels 
Pierce  the  plains  wherethrough  they  flutter, 

Round  whose  banks  the  birds  go  feeding, 
Then  soar  thanksgiving  songs  to  utter. 

Midnight  is  their  hour  apportioned, 
When,  on  magic  coursers  mounted,  ; 

Through  the  starry  skies  they  circle, 
To  chants  of  angel  choirs  uncounted. 

Of  the  foremost  birds  the  burthen 

Most  melodiously  unfolded 
Tells  of  all  the  works  of  wonder 

God  wrought  before  the  world  He  moulded. 

Then  a  sweet  crowd  heavenward  lifted, 

When  the  nocturn  bells  are  pealing, 
Chants  His  purposes  predestined 

Until  the  Day  of  Doom's  revealing. 

*  A  fair  or  open  air  assembly. 


THE   PRETERNATURAL   IN    EARLY    IRISH   POETRY        165 

Next  a  flock  whose  thoughts  are  blessed, 

Under  twilight's  curls  dim  sweeping, 
Hymn  God's  wondrous  words  of  Judgment 

When  His  Court  of  Doom  is  keeping. 

One  and  forty  on  a  hundred 

And  a  thousand,  without  lying, 
Was  their  number,  joined  to  virtue, 

Put  upon  each  bird-flock  flying. 

Who  these  faultless  birds  should  hearken, 

Thus  their  strains  of  rapture  linking, 
For  the  very  transport  of  it, 

Unto  death  would  straight  be  sinking. 

Pray  for  us,  O  mighty  Mary  ! 

When  earth's  bonds  no  more  are  binding, 
That  these  birds  our  souls  may  solace, 

In  the  Land  of  Philip's  finding. 


1 66  IRISH   LITERARY   AND   MUSICAL   STUDIES 


DR.   JOYCE'S   IRISH   WONDER  BOOK 

OLD  world  geographies,  as  Dr.  Joyce  points  out,  generally 
contained  a  chapter  on  the  Mirabilia  or  Wonders,  whether 
natural,  preternatural  or  artificial,  of  each  of  the  countries 
described;  yet  in  spite  of  the  claims  of  all  other  climes 
from  the  days  of  Herodotus  down  to  those  of  the  latest  of 
our  tellers  of  travellers'  tales,  De  Rougemont  and  Cook,  he 
gravely  maintains  that  for  such  marvels  "  no  other  country 
in  Europe,"  at  any  rate,  "  is  fit  to  hold  a  candle  to  Ireland." 
Certainly  it  would  be  hard  to  beat  his  records  of  strange 
happenings  in  The  Island  of  Saints,  though  there  are 
perhaps  incidents  in  the  Voyage  of  Maeldune,  his  own 
Wonders  beyond  Thule,  which  eclipse  those  of  Antonius 
Diogenes,  and  which  are  at  any  rate  more  grotesquely 
strange  than  the  marvels  which  he  now  sets  before  us.  For 
example,  take  these  two  specimens  from  his  Old  Celtic 
Romances : 

As  soon  as  it  was  light  they  saw  land  and  made  toward  it.  While 
they  were  casting  lots  to  know  who  should  go  and  explore  the  country, 
they  saw  great  flocks  of  ants  coming  down  to  the  beach,  each  of  them 
as  large  as  a  foal.  The  people  judged  by  their  numbers  and  by  their 
eager,  hungry  look,  that  they  were  bent  on  eating  both  ship  and  crew ; 
so  they  turned  their  vessel  round  and  sailed  quickly  away. 

Their  multitudes  countless,  prodigious  their  size  ; 

Were  never  such  ants  seen  or  heard  of  before. 
They  struggled  and  tumbled  and  plunged  for  the  prize, 
And  fiercely  the  famine  fire  blazed  from  their  eyes, 

As  they  ground  with  their  teeth  the  red  sand  of  the  shore. 


DR.    JOYCE'S   IRISH   WONDER   BOOK  167 

What  an  opportunity  for  Lord  Avebury  had  he  been 
living  at  the  time  !  He  certainly  would  have  beaten  no 
cowardly  retreat  from  the  contemplation  of  these  Brobdignag 
eritones  praedatores. 

Nor  can  Dr.  Joyce  parallel  upon  Irish  terra  firma  his 
elephant-hided  monster  of  The  Wall-circled  Isle  who  : 

Threw  up  his  heels  with  a  wonderful  bound 

And  ran  round  the  isle  with  the  speed  of  a  hare, 

But  a  feat  more  astounding  is  yet  to  be  told  ; 

He  turned  round  and  round  in  his  leathery  skin  ; 

His  bones  and  his  flesh  and  his  sinews  he  rolled — 
He  was  resting  outside  while  he  twisted  within. 

Then,  changing  his  practice  with  marvellous  skill, 
His  carcase  stood  rigid  and  round  went  his  hide  ; 

It  whirled  round  his  bones  like  the  wheel  of  a  mill — 
He  was  resting  within  while  he  twisted  outside. 

After  such  a  wonder  beyond  Thule,  how  wanting  in 
distinction  are  these  instances  of  Welsh  wonders  which  we 
have  lately  come  across. 

I  heard  it  stated  yester  morning  that  a  ship  of  lead  swam  on  the 
breakers,  that  a  ship  of  copper  sank  to  the  bottom  of  the  sea — that  is 
one  of  the  seven  wonders.  I've  heard  it  stated  that  the  sweet  dove 
was  on  the  sea  keeping  a  public  tavern,  with  her  tiny  cup  to  taste  the 
liquor — that  is  another  of  the  seven  wonders. 

Four  other  wonders  of  a  similar  type  are  described,  and 
the  Welsh  folk-lorist  then  concludes  : 

I've  heard  it  stated  that  the  swallow  was  in  the  sea,  putting  on  a 
horseshoe  with  her  hammer  of  gold  and  silver  anvil,  and  there  are  the 
seven  wonders  for  you. 

What  are  these  and  pellet-making  partridges  and  a  self- 
acting  sickle  and  a  book-reading  moon  and  even  a  cart- 
loading  pig  to  an  island  of  red-hot  animals  from  whom 
Maeldune  and  his  men  snatched,  not  roasted  chestnuts,  but 
the  juiciest  of  apples,  or  what  are  they  to  "An  island  which 


1 68  IRISH    LITERARY    AND    MUSICAL    STUDIES 

dyed  white  and  black,"  and  from  which  the  voyagers  fled  lest 
they  should  share  the  fate  of  the  white  sheep  which  turned 
black  when  flung  across  a  hedge  and  become  all  niggeryfied 
on  the  spot. 

Yet  Dr.  Joyce's  New  Wonders  of  Old  Ireland  will  hold 
their  own  even  against  such  marvels  as  these,  though  many 
of  them  are  at  the  great  disadvantage  of  being  supposed  to 
be  true. 

Here  we  have  a  new  set  of  wonderful  islands  and  in 
especial  Inishglora,  off  the  coast  of  Mayo,  whose  air  and  soil 
preserve  dead  bodies  from  decay.  There  they  were  left 
lying  in  the  open  air  retaining  their  looks  unchanged  and 
growing  their  nails  and  hair  quite  naturally,  "  so  that  a 
person  was  able  to  recognise  not  only  his  father  and  grand- 
father, but  even  his  ancestors  to  a  remote  generation."  Such 
powers  of  recognition  seem  quite  an  Irish  inspiration. 

Nennius,  as  well  as  Giraldus  and  the  Norse  Kongs 
Skuggio,  are  the  chroniclers  of  this  wonder.  Were  these 
wonderful  bodies  mummies  of  their  forbears  laid  out  in 
sight  of  their  descendants  at  periodical  tribal  gatherings? 

The  Irish  came  from  the  East  and  an  early  colony  may 
have  embalmed  their  dead. 

The  splitting  of  Mutton  Island  near  Miltown  Malbay 
into  three  is  a  natural  wonder,  not  only  recorded  in  all  the 
principal  Irish  annals  as  having  occurred  on  St.  Patrick's 
Eve  in  A.D.  804,  but  still  vividly  imprinted  upon  local 
tradition.  Evidently  this  disruption  was  caused  by  a  shock 
of  earthquake,  and  to  a  similar  cause  may  be  attributed  what 
were  regarded  as  the  miraculous  disappearances  of  lakes, 
Lee  and  Seeoran,  in  A.U.  848  and  A.D.  1054  respectively. 

The  record  in  A.D.  864  on  the  turning  of  Loch  Leane  in 
West  Meath  to  blood  for  nine  days,  and  that  of  a  shower  of 
blood  in  A.D.  875,  are  easily  explicable  in  the  latter  instance 
by  the  whirling  up  into  the  air,  as  Dr.  Joyce  points  out,  "  of 
water,  coloured  deep  red  by  millions  of  little  scarlet  fungi 
and  its  descent  to  earth  in  distant  places,  and  in  the  former 


DR.    JOYCE'S    IRISH    WONDER    BOOK  169 

case  by  a  sudden  growth  and  no  less  sudden  disappearance 
of  these  minute  scarlet  fungi  about  Loch  Leane." 

The  tidal  well  of  Corann  is  fabled  to  have  been 
set  going  by  St.  Patrick.  For  when  driving  the  demon 
reptiles  into  the  Atlantic  and  so  working  one  of  the  Irish 
wonders,  the  Saint  was  so  overcome  by  the  foul,  fiery 
breath  of  one  of  them,  that  in  an  agony  of  despair  he 
struck  his  fist  "against  the  solid  rock,  whereupon  a  well  of 
sweet  water  burst  forth  from  it." 

"That  this  well  ebbed  and  flowed,  keeping  time  with 
the  sea,  is  of  course  the  creation  of  the  people's  imagina- 
tion," writes  Dr.  Joyce,  "but  it  is  a  fact  known  beyond 
doubt  that  it  sometimes  rises  and  falls  in  a  remarkable  and 
unaccountable  way." 

We  are  here  reminded  of  the  alternate  flow  of  hot  and 
cold  water  in  an  African  spring,  as  described  by  Herodotus 
and  ridiculed  by  his  critics,  as  was  his  account  of  the  Pigmies, 
though  the  existence  of  both  marvels  have  been  recently 
established.  Herodotus  no  doubt  was  occasionally  imposed 
upon  by  the  Egyptian  priests  and  others  for  their  own 
purposes,  and  Giraldus  Cambrensis,  one  of  the  authorities 
for  his  Irish  Wonders  quoted  by  Dr.  Joyce,  had  good  reason 
for  taking  some  of  them  for  granted  and  applying  others  to 
suit  the  purpose  of  the  Norman  invaders. 

As  a  Churchman,  Gerald  Barry  supports  such  tales  of 
wonder  as  that  of  St.  Colman's  ducks,  which  not  only  refused 
to  be  boiled  but  even  avenged  any  injury  or  disrespect  to 
the  Church  or  clergy  by  deserting  their  pond,  which  there- 
upon became  putrid,  so  destroying  its  use  for  man  or  beast. 
Not  till  the  offender  was  punished  did  the  ducks  return  and 
their  pond  become  clear  and  wholesome  again. 

Giraldus  also  records  this  charming  story,  which  all  bird 
lovers  would  like  to  believe  : 

On  one  occasion  St.  Kevin  of  Glendalough  had  his  hands  stretched 
out  in  prayer,  palms  up,  through  the  little  window  of  his  cell,  when  a 
blackbird  laid  her  eggs  in  one  palm  and  sat  on  them.  When  the  Saint 


1 70  IRISH    LITERARY   AND    MUSICAL   STUDIES 

at  last  observed  the  bird,  after  his  prayer,  he  remained  motionless  in 
pity  ;  and  in  gentleness  and  patience  he  held  on  till  the  young  ones 
were  hatched  and  flew  away. 

Giraldus  professed  to  hold  the  popular  belief  in  the 
man-wolves  of  Ossory  who,  according  to  ancient  Irish 
writings,  were  human  beings  who  passed  seven  years  of  their 
lives  as  wolves,  ravaging  sheep  folds  and  devouring  cattle 
in  pairs  and  then  returning  to  their  human  forms  whilst 
another  wolf-pair  took  their  place  for  a  similar  period. 

Giraldus  is  never  wanting  in  a  good  story  when  it  serves 
his  purpose,  and  he  tells  "  a  very  circumstantial  one  "  about 
a  wolf  who  came  up  to  a  benighted  priest  and  his  youthful 
companion,  and  addressing  them  in  very  good  Gaelic  told 
them  there  was  no  danger  to  them  from  him  and  his 
comrades,  and  after  spending  the  night  in  converse  with 
them  by  their  fire,  thus  answered  an  inquiry  of  the  priest 
as  to  whether,  in  his  opinion,  the  hostile  people,  the  "  Anglo- 
Normans,"  who  had  lately  landed  in  Ireland,  would  hold 
the  country  for  any  length  of  time. 

The  anger  of  the  Lord  has  fallen  on  an  evil  generation,  and  on 
account  of  the  sins  of  our  nation  and  the  monstrous  vices  of  the  people, 
he  has  given  them  into  the  hands  of  their  enemies.  This  foreign  race 
shall  be  quite  secure  and  invincible  so  long  as  they  shall  walk  in  the 
ways  of  the  Lord  and  keep  His  Commandments,  but  we  know  that  the 
path  leading  to  sinful  pleasures  is  easy  and  human  nature  is  prone  to 
follow  ill  example  ;  so  if  this  strange  people  shall  hereafter  learn  our 
wicked  habits  from  living  amongst  us,  they  will  no  doubt,  like  us, 
draw  down  upon  themselves  the  vengeance  of  divine  Providence. 

The  sanctimonious  wolf  then  went  off  with  himself. 

Of  course  Giraldus,  as  Dr.  Joyce  pithily  puts  it,  invented 
this  story,  "  for  the  double  pious  purpose  of  favouring  his 
Anglo-Norman  friends  and  having  a  good  hearty  slap  at  the 
Irish  people."  But  the  wolf's  prophecy  as  to  what  would 
happen  if  the  Normans  became  more  Irish  than  the  Irish 
is  curiously  suggestive.  Dr.  Joyce's  authorities  for  his 
wonders,  besides  Giraldus  and  Kongs  Skuggio's  The  Royal 


DR.    JOYCES    IRISH   WONDER   BOOK  171 

Mirror,  written  about  A.D.  1250  in  the  Norse  language,  are 
The  Book  of  Ballymote,  a  large  manuscript  volume  full  of 
miscellaneous  pieces  in  the  Irish  language,  copied  into  that 
book  towards  the  end  of  the  i4th  century,  an  ancient  manu- 
script (H.  3  17)  in  the  library  of  Trinity  College,  Dublin, 
the  third  part  of  Roderick  O'Flaherty's  Ogygia,  and  Sir 
James  Ware's  Antiquities  of  Ireland. 

Much  of  this  material  is  all  but  unreadable  and  much  of 
it  is  meaningless,  and  Dr.  Joyce  deserves  great  credit  there- 
fore for  dishing  up  this  pemmican,  as  he  calls  it,  in  such  a 
palatable  form  as  the  above  extracts  from  his  volume  prove 
him  to  have  done. 

But  let  us  record  just  a  few  more  of  his  wonders.  The 
Island  of  Loch  Cre  or  Inishmameo  had  three  wonderful 
properties.  No  one  guilty  of  any  great  sin  could  die  in  it ; 
the  body  of  no  unrepentant  sinner  could  be  buried  in  it ; 
and  no  woman  or  the  female  of  any  animal  could  enter  it. 
It  is  unfortunate  that  St.  Kevin  did  not  take  up  his  quarters 
there  and  so  escape  having  to  protect  his  privacy  by  woman- 
slaughter.  It  is  a  greater  pity  that  the  island  has  quite  lost 
its  misogynistic  defences  and  is  no  longer  a  safe  asylum  for 
the  Prime  Minister  and  the  Chancellor  of  the  Exchequer 
from  the  assaults  of  the  suffragettes. 

Aviation  is  so  much  with  us  nowadays  that  the  following 
marvel,  recorded  by  Kongs  Skuggio,  may  really  have  been 
only  a  foreshadowing  of  what  is  to  be  expected  from  Sabbath- 
breaking  air-craftsmen.  "  On  a  Sunday,  while  the  people 
were  at  Mass  in  Clonmacnoise,  there  dropped  from  the  air, 
hanging  from  a  rope,  an  anchor,  the  fluke  of  which  caught 
in  an  arch  of  the  Church  door.  The  astonished  people 
looked  upwards  along  the  rope  and  saw  a  ship  floating  on 
top.  One  of  the  crew  leaped  overboard  and  dived  and 
swam  down  to  loosen  the  anchor,  when  some  of  the 
congregation  seized  and  held  him  while  he  struggled  to  free 
himself;  till  the  bishop,  who  happened  to  be  just  then 
present,  directed  them  to  let  him  go ;  for,  as  he  said,  if  held 


172  IRISH    LITERARY   AND   MUSICAL   STUDIES 

down  he  would  die  as  if  held  under  water.  They  let  him 
go  and  up  he  floated,  when  the  crew  cut  the  rope  at  the  top 
and  the  ship  sailed  away  out  of  sight."  The  old  Norseman 
gravely  adds,  of  course  as  he  heard  the  story  : — "  and  the 
anchor  has  since  lain  in  Clonmacnoise  Church  as  a  witness 
that  the  event  really  occurred." 

Dr.  Joyce  appears  to  have  been  reading  Mr.  Wells  when 
he  was  transcribing  this  story  from  the  Norse,  for  he  calls 
attention  to  the  circumstance  "  that  the  original  narrator 
of  this  wonder  believed  the  crew  of  the  ship  to  have  been 
the  inhabitants  of  the  upper  air  ...  who  had  ventured  for 
once  on  an  unusual  voyage  of  discovery  down  to  the  earth." 

The  last  wonder  described  by  Dr.  Joyce  is  the  Lia  Fail, 
or  Coronation  Stone  of  Tara,  on  which  the  ancient  kings  of 
Ireland  were  crowned  and  "  which  uttered  a  shout  when- 
ever a  king  of  the  true  Scotic  or  Irish  race  stood  or  sat  on 
it."  This  stone,  so  ran  the  tradition,  was  brought  out  of 
Lochlann  or  Scandinavia  by  the  Dedannan  conquerors  and 
served  as  their  Coronation  stone  and  that  of  the  Milesians 
who  conquered  them  in  turn.  Scottish  writers  affirm  that 
when  the  Scotic  princes,  Fergus,  Angus,  and  Lome,  the 
three  sons  of  Ere  of  Dalriada  in  North  Antrim,  conquered 
western  Scotland  in  503  A.D.,  Fergus,  with  the  consent  of 
the  King  of  Ireland,  caused  the  Lia  Fail  to  be  brought  over 
to  Alba  (Scotland)  and  had  himself  crowned  on  it,  there 
being  an  ancient  prophecy  that,  into  whatsoever  land  the 
Lia  Fail  was  brought,  there  a  prince  of  the  Scotic  or  Irish 
race  should  be  crowned,  a  prophecy  which  Hector  Boece, 
the  Scottish  writer,  presents  in  this  Latin  form : 

Ni  fallat  fatum,  Scoti,  quocunque  locatum 
Invenient  lapidem,  regnare  tenentur  ibidem. 

On  account  of  this  prophecy,  writes  Dr.  Joyce,  "  the  stone 
received  the  name  of  Lia  Fail,  which  according  to  the 
Scotch  authorities  means  the  stone  of  Destiny,  and  upon  a 
stone  supposed  to  be  the  true  Lia  Fail,  the  Scottish  kings 


DR.    JOYCE'S    IRISH   WONDER   BOOK  173 

were  crowned  at  Scone,  and  the  Kings  of  England,  since 
the  time  of  our  James  I.,  have  been  crowned  in  West- 
minster Abbey. 

Unfortunately  for  the  truth  of  this  legend,  Dr.  Petrie 
has  proved  that  the  Lia  Fail  was  in  Tara  four  centuries 
after  the  time  of  the  alleged  removal  to  Scotland.  Anti- 
quaries of  the  late  tenth  and  early  eleventh  centuries  affirm 
that  the  stone  was  in  Tara,  and  indeed  the  poet  scholar 
Kineth  O'Hartigan,  who  died  in  the  year  975,  visited  Tara 
with  the  object  of  describing  it.  After  mentioning  in  detail 
several  monuments  which  he  found  still  existing  there,  he 
states  that  he  was  actually  standing  on  the  Lia  Fail : 

The  stone  which  is  under  my  two  feet, 
From  it  is  called  Inis  Fail  ; 
Between  two  strands  of  strong  tide, 
The  Plain  of  Fal  (as  a  name)  for  all  Erin. 

Fal  was  the  proper  name  of  the  stone  of  which  the  genitive 
form  is  Fail  as  it  appears  in  Lia  Fail.  The  word  Lia 
means  a  stone,  and  Lia  Fail  is  literally  the  '  stone  of  Fal.'  " 
Dr.  Petrie  attempts,  in  his  Essay  on  Tara,  to  identify  as 
the  true  Lia  Fail  a  pillar  stone  now  standing  on  the  Forradh 
of  Tara,  as  the  present  writer  can  vouch,  taken,  as  he  asserts, 
from  The  Mound  of  Hostages  in  1821  and  placed  to  mark 
the  grave  of  some  rebels  killed  in  1798.  But  Dr.  Joyce 
controverts  Dr.  Petrie's  view,  having  been  assured  by  one 
of  the  men  who  helped  in  the  removal  of  the  stone  in 
question,  that  it  was  not  brought  from  the  Mound  of 
Hostages  where  the  true  Lia  Fail  was  recorded  to  have 
stood,  but  from  the  bottom  of  the  trench  surrounding  the 
Forradh  itself,  where  it  had  been  lying  prostrate  for  genera- 
tions. Furthermore,  Dr.  Joyce  wisely  observes  that  the 
pillar  stone  believed  by  Dr.  Petrie  to  be  the  Irish  Corona- 
tion stone  is  of  a  size  and  shape  quite  unsuitable  for  stand- 
ing on  during  the  ceremonies  of  installation  and  coronation  ; 
and  seeing  that  the  stone  weighs  considerably  more  than  a 


174  IRISH   LITERARY   AND    MUSICAL   STUDIES 

ton  it  would  be  impracticable  to  carry  it  about,  as  the 
legends  say  the  Dedannans  carried  the  Lia  Fail  in  their 
overland  journeys  in  Scandinavia,  Scotland  and  Ireland  and 
on  oversea  voyages  in  their  hide-covered  wicker  boats.  Dr. 
Joyce's  conclusion,  therefore,  is  that  the  true  Lia  Fail 
remains  still  in  Tara  buried  and  hidden  somewhere  in  the 
soil ;  probably  in  the  position  where  the  old  writers  place  it 
on  the  north  side  of  the  Mound  of  Hostages. 

Here  is  indeed  an  opportunity  for  such  energetic  Irish 
antiquaries  as  Sir  Henry  Bellingham  or  Mr.  Francis  Joseph 
Bigger;  indeed,  what  have  they  been  about  not  to  have 
unearthed  the  true  Lia  Fail  before  King  George's  Corona- 
tion, and  there  put  it  to  the  test  which  the  Westminster 
stone  has  ignominiously  failed  to  stand,  for  there  is 
certainly  no  record  of  that  impostor  having  "  let  out  a 
shout "  since  kings  of  the  true  Scotic  and  Irish  race  have 
been  crowned  upon  it  in  the  Abbey. 

Dr.  Joyce's  volume  contains  other  good  things  besides 
the  wonders  of  Ireland.  His  genius  for  investigation  has 
enabled  him  to  identify  some  of  Spenser's  Irish  Rivers 
whose  names  have  hitherto  puzzled  the  poet's  commen- 
tators. He  gives  us  two  striking  folk  tales  of  horror  in  The 
Destruction  of  Tiernntas  and  Fergus  O  Mara  and  the  Demons^ 
his  short  biographies  of  Ireland's  three  patron  saints,  St. 
Patrick,  St.  Brigit,  and  St.  Columkille,  and  of  her  scholar 
saint  Donatus,  Bishop  of  Fiesole,  are  good  reading,  as  are 
his  contrasted  sketches  of  an  Irish  and  Norman  warrior, 
Cahal  O'Conor  of  the  Red  Hand  and  Sir  John  de  Courcy ; 
and  lastly  he  tells  a  pathetic  tale  of  his  native  Glenosheen 
in  the  dialect  of  the  Limerick  peasantry  of  seventy  years 
ago,  which  might  have  been  written  by  William  Carleton 
himself,  so  human  is  its  interest  and  so  vivid  is  its 
colouring. 


FOLK   SONG 

AN  ADDRESS  DELIVERED  BEFORE  THE  CYMMRODORION  SECTION  OF 
THE  WELSH  NATIONAL  EISTEDDFOD  OF  1906  AT  CARNARVON, 
AND  BROUGHT  UP  TO  DATE 

THERE  seems  to  be  a  general  impression  that  the  folk  songs 
of  the  British  Isles  have  been  already  collected,  and  are  all 
to  be  found  within  the  covers  of  old  song  books  or  on  the 
broadside  ballad  sheets  published  in  London  and  the  larger 
provincial  towns.  There  could  be  no  graver  error. 
Hundreds,  not  to  say  thousands,  of  British  and  Irish  folk 
songs  remain  uncollected,  if  we  are  to  judge  by  the  results 
obtained  within  the  last  few  years  under  the  auspices  of  the 
Folk  Song  Societies.  Mr.  Cecil  Sharp  has  collected  500 
songs  in  Somerset  and  Devon,  but  mainly  in  the  former 
county,  and  declares  that  very  many  more  tunes  might  still 
be  collected  in  these  counties.  A  hundred  songs  have 
come  before  the  Folk  Song  Society  from  Leicestershire 
alone,  and  Mr.  Vaughan  Williams  has  dealt  with  a  vast 
body  collected  by  him  in  East  Anglia.  In  his  preface  to 
his  collection  of  sixty-one  folk  songs  he  writes  : — "Although 
the  field  covered  by  the  tunes  in  this  Journal  is  in  one  sense 
very  large,  in  another  it  is  very  small,  since  it  is  only  a 
small  part  of  each  county  which  I  have  searched  for  songs, 
and  the  time  spent  has  been  of  necessity  very  short.  What 
results  might  not  be  obtained  from  a  systematic  and  sym- 
pathetic search  through  all  the  villages  and  towns  of 
England  ?  And  yet  this  precious  heritage  of  beautiful 
melody  is  being  allowed  to  slip  through  our  hands  through 
mere  ignorance  or  apathy."  I  may  here  say  that  the  Folk 


176  IRISH    LITERARY   AND    MUSICAL   STUDIES 

Song  Society  was  founded  at  my  suggestion  in  1898,  for  the 
purpose  of  collecting  and  publishing  folk  songs,  ballads  and 
tunes.  Its  first  meeting  was  held  at  the  rooms  of  the  Irish 
Literary  Society  of  London,  of  which  I  was  then  honorary 
secretary,  and  it  is  now  on  a  secure  basis.  Its  president  is 
Lord  Tennyson,  its  vice-presidents  Sir  Hubert  Parry,  who 
may  be  said  to  represent  England  and  Wales,  Sir  Alexander 
Mackenzie  standing  for  Scotland,  and  Sir  Charles  Villiers 
Stanford  being  the  Irish  representative.  Mr.  Frederick 
Keel  is  honorary  secretary,  and  the  committee  has  amongst  its 
members  such  distinguished  folk  song  collectors  as  Sir  Ernest 
Clarke,  Mr.  Frank  Kidson,  Mr.  J.  A.  Fuller  Maitland,  Miss 
Broadwood,  Mr.  Cecil  Sharp,  and  Dr.  Vaughan  Williams. 
Lady  Gomme,  the  leading  authority  on  old  English  singing 
games,  is  its  honorary  treasurer.  The  society  publishes  in 
its  Journal,  of  which  sixteen  parts  have  appeared,  such 
contributions  of  traditional  songs  as  may  be  chosen  by  a 
committee  of  musical  experts,  and  from  time  to  time  holds 
meetings  at  which  these  songs  are  introduced  and  form  the 
subject  of  performance,  lecture  and  discussion.  A  legal 
opinion  having  been  obtained  upon  the  subject,  the  society 
guarantees  that  all  versions  of  songs  and  words  published  in 
their  Journal  are  the  copyright  of  the  collectors  supplying 
them,  and  are  printed  on  behalf  of  that  collector,  whose 
permission  must  be  obtained  for  any  reproduction  thereof. 

Ireland,  with  its  Home  Rule  tendencies,  felt,  however, 
that  her  own  folk  song  affairs  needed  special  treatment,  and 
an  Irish  Folk  Song  Society  has  been  started  under  the 
secretaryship  of  Mrs.  Milligan  Fox,  who  has  recently  made 
a  valuable  find  of  manuscripts  and  memorials  relating  to 
Edward  Bunting,  from  whose  three  collections  Thomas 
Moore  took  so  many  of  his  Irish  melodies,  and  is,  like  Mr. 
Hughes,  the  first  joint  editor  with  her  of  its  Journal,  an 
enthusiastic  and  successful  folk  song  collector. 

Before  this  Irish  Folk  Song  Society  was  formed,  our  Irish 
Literary  Society,  after  negotiations  with  Sir  C.  V.  Stanford, 


FOLK    SONG  177 

published  the  Petrie  collection  of  the  ancient  airs  of  Ireland, 
which  had  fallen  into  his  hands — a  gathering  of  nearly  2,000 
tunes  of  which  not  200  had  been  previously  given  to  the 
public.  This  collection  is,  I  believe,  the  largest  ever  got 
together  by  a  single  individual,  and  is  of  extraordinary  interest. 

Meantime,  moreover,  the  officials  of  the  Feis  Ceoil,  an 
Irish  National  musical  festival  much  on  the  lines  of  the 
Eisteddfod,  have  been  gathering  Irish  airs  from  the  pipers 
and  fiddlers  attending  its  meetings  by  means  of  the  phono- 
graph, and  the  Gaelic  League,  which  encourages  traditional 
singing  in  Irish,  has  also  got  together  a  considerable  body 
of  hitherto  unpublished  airs. 

Finally,  as  far  as  Ireland  is  concerned,  I  can  report  the 
publication  of  two  other  great  bodies  of  fresh  Irish  melodies- 
My  old  friend  Dr.  Joyce,  who  has  done  so  much  for  Irish 
history,  archaeology,  romance  and  music,  has  issued,  with 
Messrs.  Longmans,  the  great  long-lost  collection  of  Irish  airs 
gathered  by  Pigott  and  Ford,  a  Cork  musician  of  the  last 
century,  which  the  doctor  had  at  last  run  to  earth  and  pur- 
chased. He  has  also  included  in  his  volume  selections  from 
Professor  Goodman's  fine  collection  of  Munster  airs,  so  that 
his  volume  contains  nearly  a  thousand  unknown  Irish  tunes, 
chiefly  from  the  counties  of  Cork,  Kerry,  Limerick,  Leitrim 
and  Sligo.  He  has  besides  shown  me  a  pile  of  yet  un- 
published folk  songs. 

Crossing  over  from  Dublin  to  Holyhead,  I  met 
the  collector  of  another  vast  body  of  Irish  music, 
Mr.  O'Neill,  for  long  the  distinguished  chief  of  police  in 
Chicago.  This  folk  song  enthusiast,  beginning  by  setting 
down  the  Irish  airs  learnt  at  his  Irish-speaking  mother's 
knee,  and  then  through  a  course  of  years  tapping  the 
memories  of  fellow-countrymen  who  had  drifted  to  Chicago 
from  all  the  four  corners  of  the  Green  Isle,  has  succeeded 
in  putting  together  some  1,850  airs,  of  which  at  least  500 
have  never  before  been  in  print.  The  great  value  of  this 
collection  consists  in  the  number  of  instrumental  airs  which 

N 


178  IRISH   LITERARY   AND   MUSICAL   STUDIES 

it  contains.  '  Levy's  book  of  The"  Dance  Music  of  Ireland  is 
dwarfed  beside  it. 

About  nineteen  years  ago  Mr.  W.  H.  Gill,  brother  of  the 
Northern  Deemster,  came  to  me  with  an  inquiry  as  to  the 
possible  Irish  origin  of  some  Manx  folk  songs  which  he  had 
collected.  It  turned  out  that,  after  failing  to  secure  more 
than  a  dozen  fresh  folk  songs  in  the  Isle  of  Man,  he  had 
altered  his  methods  of  research,  and  had  thus  collected  250 
airs,  some  of  English,  some  of  Scotch,  some  of  Norse,  and 
some  of  Irish  origin,  yet  all  domesticated  in  little  Elian 
Vannin.  Besides  these,  Mr.  Speaker  Moore  has  got  to- 
gether a  considerable  body  of  hitherto  unnoted  Manx  airs. 

There  is  no  concerted  effort  being  made  to  collect  the 
many  unpublished  airs  still  floating  in  the  Highlands,  though 
I  have  heard  of  a  couple  of  male  enthusiasts  who  have  been 
thus  engaged  within  recent  years ;  but  Miss  Murray,  an 
American  lady  of  Scotch  descent,  has  collected  no  less  than 
150  airs  of  a  most  distinctive  character  in  the  Hebrides,  and 
a  charming  article  on  the  subject  from  her  pen  is  contained 
in  a  recent  number  of  the  Celtic  Revieu>,  and  more  recently 
Mrs.  Kennedy  Fraser  has  brought  out  a  delightful  collection 
of  Hebridean  airs  finely  harmonised  and  with  Gaelic  and 
English  words  to  them.  I  think  I  have  conclusively  proved 
that  the  treasures  of  our  recently  published,  unpublished 
and  even  uncollected  folk  songs  are  surprisingly  large. 

By  what  methods  have  these  folk  songs  been  gathered  ? 
Let  us  listen  to  the  experiences  of  some  of  the  collectors 
named  above.  Mr.  Henry  Berstow  supplied  Miss  Lucy  Broad- 
wood,  the  second  secretary  of  the  Folk  Song  Society,  with  most 
of  her  Sussex  songs.  He  was  sixty-eight  years  old  in  1893 
when  he  sang  them  to  her.  He  was  a  native  of  Horsham, 
which,  up  to  that  year,  he  had  never  left  for  a  night,  except 
once  for  a  week.  He  is  well  known  in  Sussex  and  parts  of 
Surrey  as  a  bellringer,  and  also  in  great  request  as  a  singer. 
He  is  proud  of  knowing  400  songs,  and  keeps  a  valuable 
list  of  their  titles.  He  once,  by  request,  sang  all  his  songs 


FOLK    SONG  179 

to  an  inquiring  stranger.  It  took  a  month  to  do  it,  but 
many  of  these  he  refused  to  sing  to  Miss  Broadwood, 
considering  them  to  be  unfit  for  ladies'  ears,  and  though  by 
their  titles  they  promised  to  be  amongst  the  very  oldest 
ballads,  he  could  not  detach  the  tunes  from  the  words,  and 
the  airs  have  therefore  remained  unnoted.  He  learnt,  as 
he  said,  very  many  of  these  old  songs  and  "  ballets "  from 
shoemakers,  who  were  always  singing  at  their  work.  Others 
he  learnt  from  labourers,  who  often  could  not  read.  For 
many  a  day  he  tried  to  learn  an  old  song  from  a  certain 
carter,  but  the  man  was  shy  and  would  not  sing  it,  because 
he  thought  Mr.  Berstow  wanted  to  laugh  at  his  "burr" 
(Sussex  for  "  accent ").  At  length  Mr.  Berstow  laid  a  deep 
plot.  A  confederate  lured  the  carter  into  an  alehouse,  where 
Mr.  Berstow  sat  hidden  in  an  inner  parlour.  Flattered  by 
his  treacherous  boon  companion,  the  carter  presently  burst 
forth  into  his  favourite  "  ballet,"  and  Mr.  Berstow  listened, 
learnt  and  sang  the  song  from  that  day  forth. 

The  first  secretary  of  the  Folk  Song  Society,  Mrs.  Kate 
Lee,  was  emboldened  to  attempt  an  even  more  desperate 
enterprise.  To  get  hold  of  some  folk  songs  which  she  knew 
were  reserved  for  the  ears  of  the  frequenters  of  a  country 
inn  in  The  Broads,  she  obtained  admittance  as  a  waitress  at 
the  ordinary  table^  and  when  the  diners  had  settled  down  to 
beer,  tobacco,  and  song,  she  got  those  precious  folk  songs  into 
her  head,  and  kept  them  there  for  the  benefit  of  the  society. 

Except  in  the  remote  glens,  amongst  primitive  peoples, 
few  folk  songs  remain  to  be  gleaned  from  the  younger 
generation,  but  Miss  Murray  has  been  fortunate  enough  to 
make  a  remarkable  collection,  chiefly  among  the  young 
island  girls  of  the  Hebrides.  They  were  very  shy  about 
crooning  before  her,  and  could  hardly  be  got  to  believe  that 
the  airs  she  set  down  from  their  chanting  were  what  they 
had  been  reciting.  To  them  the  words  only  gave  a  sug- 
gestion of  music,  and  they  had  therefore  unconsciously 
assimilated  the  wild  and  uncommon  airs  to  which  the  tunes 

N    2 


l8o  IRISH    LITERARY   AND   MUSICAL   STUDIES 

were  matched.  Like  Mr.  Berstow,  they  could  not  detach 
the  tune  from  the  words,  and  but  for  the  latter  the  airs 
would  have  been  lost. 

In  less  primitive  places,  folk  songs  are  preserved  by 
elderly  and  old  people  alone.  This  is  true  for  Mr.  Sharp's 
collection,  his  singers  ranging  from  sixty  to  nearly  ninety 
years  of  age,  and  Mr.  W.  H.  Gill  has  had  the  same 
experiences  in  the  Isle  of  Man.  The  Manx  are  a  shy  race, 
and  he  had  much  difficulty  in  coaxing  the  old  tunes  out  of 
them.  Friendliness,  combined  with  judicious  backsheesh,  in 
the  way  of  snuff,  tobacco,  tea,  and  ale,  unloosened  their 
tongues  and  revived  their  memories.  He  extracted  one 
excellent  tune  from  a  one-legged  man  who  had  played  the 
fiddle  in  his  youth,  and  could  not  be  got  to  remember  the 
air  in  question  till  he  had  propped  himself  up  against  the 
wall,  and  had  drawn  his  crutch  for  a  long  time  across  his 
shoulder,  as  if  playing  upon  the  long-disused  instrument. 
With  the  air  thus  recovered  in  his  head,  he  found  himself 
able  to  hum  it  to  Mr.  Gill. 

I  myself  picked  up  a  long  lost  Irish  air  under  curious 
circumstances  at  Harlech.  I  was  at  work  in  my  study, 
when  my  ears  were  saluted  by  an  unmistakably  Irish  tune 
played  on  a  hand  organ.  The  air  was  unfamiliar  to  me, 
and  I  accordingly  went  out  and  asked  the  organ  grinder 
about  it.  " It  is  The  Beautiful  City  of  Slige"  he  replied. 
"  I  have  played  it  on  the  road  for  forty  years,  and  my  father 
had  played  it  as  many  before  me.  He  bought  the  organ  at 
the  sale  of  a  gentleman's  property  in  Liverpool."  The 
tune  had  become  rather  blurred,  owing  to  the  age  of  the 
instrument,  but  by  putting  the  organ  grinder  at  a  little 
distance  on  the  terrace  outside  my  house,  and  whistling  the 
air  as  he  played  it  through  the  window  to  my  wife  as  she 
sat  pencil  in  hand  at  the  piano,  I  succeeded  in  recovering 
it.  The  air  was  set  by  Sir  Charles  Stanford  to  a  lyric  of 
my  own,  suggested  by  the  traditional  title,  and  is  now  one 
of  Mr.  Plunket  Greene's  most  successful  songs. 


FOLK   SONG  l8t 

Dr.  Stokes,  in  his  Life  of  Petrie,  describes  how  that 
famous  archaeologist  and  delightful  man  collected  folk  songs 
in  the  Isle  of  Arran.  Hearing  that  a  certain  household  in 
one  of  the  islands  "  had  music,"  he  visited  it,  when  the  day's 
work  was  done,  with  his  friend,  Eugene  O'Curry.  He  found 
an  expectant  group  of  the  islanders  round  the  turf  fire,  and 
the  proceedings  began  by  the  singing  of  a  tune  which  Petrie 
wished  to  add  to  his  repertory.  O'Curry  first  took  down 
the  Irish  words,  which,  of  course,  helped  to  establish  the 
measure  of  the  air,  then  Petrie  began  to  note  the  tune, 
stopping  from  time  to  time  to  make  sure  that  he  had  got 
the  correct  version  of  each  strain,  and  then  getting  the 
singer  to  repeat  it  again  throughout.  Having  thus  secured 
the  air,  he  would  play  it  on  his  violin,  an  instrument  of 
singular  sweetness  and  power,  as  few  others  could  have 
played  it.  The  effect  upon  a  music-loving  people  was 
electrical.  Young  and  old  broke  out  into  expressions  ot 
eager  delight,  and  after  an  encore  a  new  air  was  ^similarly 
dealt  with. 

What  is  the  origin  of  folk  song  ?  Evidently  there  is  a 
musical  instinct  in  the  young  of  all  races.  How  early  do  we 
note  our  children  crooning  of  their  own  accord  when  in  a 
contented  or  happy  frame  of  mind  ?  As  with  the  child,  so, 
I  believe,  with  the  early  races.  Calls  to  cattle,  street  and 
country  cries  with  intonations,  such  as  the  "  jodling  "  of  the 
Tyrolese,  strike  one  as  amongst  the  probable  beginnings  of 
folk  songs. 

The  songs  of  occupation  would  seem  to  be  extended 
instances  of  these  primeval  chants.  The  occupation  sug- 
gests certain  measures  •  thus  the  rocking  of  the  cradle,  the 
blow  of  the  hammer  on  the  anvil,  the  sweep  of  the  oars  in 
the  water,  the  turning  of  the  spinning  wheel— each  invites  a 
rhythmic  chant,  monotonous  at  first,  but  afterwards  taking  on 
melodic  cadences  which  become  tunes. 

And  here  the  genius  of  various  languages  comes  in,  as 
has  been  pointed  out  by  Francis  Korbay,  the  Hungarian 


1 82  IRISH   LITERARY   AND    MUSICAL   STUDIES 

musician,  in  an  article  in  Harper's  Magazine,  The 
length  of  the  Hungarian  words  tends  to  a  peculiar  rhythm, 
classically  known  as  the  "  choriamb ic,"  and  the  Hungarian 
folk  songs  are  all  stamped  with  that  peculiar  measure.  In 
great  contrast  to  these  airs  are  the  folk  songs  of  The  Prin- 
cipality, which  are  largely  trochaic  in  measure,  especially 
when  of  instrumental  origin,  and  with  a  tendency  to  dissyl- 
labic line  endings,  sometimes  three  times  repeated,  an  effect 
helped  doubtless  by  the  cadences  which  are  peculiar  to 
Welsh  harp  music. 

This  mention  of  the  harp  suggests  that  to  that  instrument 
narrative  poems  were  chanted  or  cantilated,  often  at  great 
length.  Words  then  were  of  prime  consequence,  and  the 
bard,  even  upon  the  battlefield,  would  recite  the  achieve- 
ments of  his  fathers,  as  an  incitement  to  his  chieftain.  It 
is  stated  indeed  that  the  bard  thus  chanted  on  the  old  Irish 
battlefields,  surrounded  by  a  group  of  harpers,  who  accom- 
panied him,  almost  with  the  effect  of  a  military  band. 
Thus,  no  doubt,  arose  the  clan  marches,  and  where  the 
chiefs  fell  fighting,  the  lamentations  over  fallen  heroes 
common  to  the  Gaelic  and  Cymric  branches  of  the 
Celts. 

It  would  not  appear  as  if  chorus  songs  were  of  early 
origin,  though  there  is  a  hint  or  two  of  something  of  the 
kind  in  early  Irish  literature.  In  the  Fenian  tales  there  is 
occasional  reference  to  the  Dord,  which  would  appear  to  be 
a  concerted  cry  or  chorus,  a  cry  of  warning,  if  not  a  war 
cry.  And  in  some  of  the  early  Irish  airs,  such  as  "'Tis 
pretty  to  be  in  Ballindery,"  there  is  an  indication  of  a 
chorus.  Later  on,  in  Irish  and  Highland  music,  we  find 
chorus  songs  of  occupation,  called  "  Lubeens  "  amongst  the 
Irish  and  "  Luinings "  amongst  the  Highlanders.  These 
seem  to  follow  solos  and  alternate  improvised  utterances 
in  song,  such  amcebean  contests  as  we  find  in  the  eclogues 
of  Theocritus  and  Virgil,  and  in  Welsh  airs  with  choruses 
such  as  "  Hob  y  Deri  Dando." 


FOLK   SONG  183 

I  have  suggested  that  each  language  has  its  own 
rhythmic  genius  ;  its  accent,  brogue,  burr,  or  whatever  you 
call  it,  is  part  of  this,  and  a  clever  musical  Scot  told  me  he 
was  prepared  to  show  how  the  Scotch  intonation  affected 
Scotch  music.  If  this  be  so,  it  is  obvious  that  a  popular 
air  carried  from  one  country  to  another  will  become  modi- 
fied by  the  rhythmical  genius  of  the  race  amongst  which 
it  is  domesticated.  A  case  in  point  is  the  air  known  in 
Ireland  as  the  "  Cruiskeen  lawn,"  an  air  of  considerable 
antiquity,  and,  I  believe,  sung  in  an  early  form  to  one  of 
Sedulius's  Latin  hymns.  That  air  was  played  to  me  at  the 
Moore  Centenary  by  a  Swedish  musician  many  years  ago 
as  a  Norse  air.  It  no  doubt  passed  into  Norway  when 
Dublin  was  the  capital  of  the  Xorse  empire,  and  the  tides 
of  music  flowed  strongly  between  Ireland  and  Scandinavia. 
That  same  air  is  regarded  by  the  Welsh  as  one  of  their 
National  melodies,  namely,  "  The  Vale  of  Clwyd,"  and  it  is 
famous,  in  another  form,  in  Scotland  as  "John  Anderson, 
my  jo,  John."  A  beautiful  tune,  "  The  Cobbler  of  Castle- 
berry,"  known  now  as  "  The  Cuckoo  Madrigal,"  is  evidently 
an  English  air  twisted  into  an  Irish  shape,  and  a  Welsh 
hymn  on  the  New  Jerusalem  is  an  English  sacred  air  thrown 
into  a  much  finer  Welsh  form. 

All  this  suggests  a  fascinating  aspect  of  folk  song  from 
what  might  be  called  the  point  of  view,  not  of  comparative 
philology,  but  "  comparative  philophony."  The  root  of  an 
air  would  be  looked  for  probably  amongst  Oriental  peoples, 
like  the  Indians  and  Persians,  who,  according  to  Dr.  Petrie, 
have  set  our  Irish  slumber  tunes  and  ploughmen's  whistles 
agoing.  Thence  it  would  be  traced  in  its  various  develop- 
ments amongst  different  nationalities,  till  it  reached  a  point 
of  alteration  which  would  make  it  unrecognisable  to  any  but 
those  who  had  thus  followed  it  step  by  step  from  its  primi- 
tive source.  All  this,  of  course,  has  to  be  systematically 
followed  up,  but  what  a  joy  to  a  great  musical  grammarian  ! 
Early  Scotch  musical  manuscripts,  and  some  of  Bunting's 


184  IRISH    LITERARY   AND    MUSICAL    STUDIES 

earliest  printed  Irish  tunes,  show  folk  airs  in  a  very  elemen- 
tal condition.  The  musical  grammarian  might  very  well 
trace  these  growing  up  into  beautiful  Scotch  and  Irish 
melodies.  He  would  also  find  them  degenerating  in  course 
of  time  into  poor  variants.  How  are  we  to  account  for 
these  processes,  and  for  the  corresponding  improvement 
and  deterioration  of  the  words  to  which  these  folk  songs 
were  sung  ?  Surely,  that  very  word  "  folk-song  "  gives  the 
key  to  the  explanation.  One  of  the  folk  chants  a  song  to  a 
rude  tune  on  a  rude  instrument.  It  is  taken  up,  improved 
in  rhythm,  improved  in  air,  and  often  benefited  by  an 
improved  instrument — a  hacp  of  thirty  strings,  for  example, 
as  opposed  to  one  with  a  dozen.  A  consummation  is 
finally  reached.  A  musical  genius  arises.  Under  his 
cultivation  the  simple  rose  of  the  hedgeside  blossoms  into 
the  perfect  garden  flower.  And  to  match  this  beautiful 
melody,  perfect  words  are  needed,  if  indeed  thay  have  not 
inspired  the  absolute  air.  A  Thomas  Moore  or  a  Robert 
Burns,  with  his  "  Minstrel  Boy  "  or  his  "  Scots  wha  hae  wi' 
Wallace  bled,"  crystallises  the  melody  for  ever. 

Other  airs  are  not  so  fortunate.  Partnered  by  vulgar 
or  meaningless  or  dissolute  words,  they  drop  out  of  favour, 
and  many  of  these  are  at  this  very  moment  hiding  their 
heads  among  the  Welsh  vales  and  mountains.  Even 
Moore's  instinct  was  not  unerring,  and  some  of  his  melodies 
have  ceased  to  hold  the  public,  because  the  words  written 
to  the  airs  have  proved  to  be  of  an  ephemeral  kind. 

Again  beautiful,  though  distinctly  secular  tunes,  are 
pressed  into  the  services  of  the  churches.  Many  of  the 
Welsh  love  songs,  I  am  told,  are  now  used  as  Welsh  hymns, 
and  to  restore  them  to  their  former  use  would  probably  be 
regarded  as  desecration.  Some  of  the  Welsh  rollicking 
airs,  too  much  associated  in  the  past  with  the  tavern  and 
rowdy  revelry,  are  now  altogether  discountenanced,  while 
their  instrumental  use  as  dances,  such  as  are  favoured  in 
Ireland  and  Scotland,  is  a  thing  of  the  past  in  Wales ; 


FOLK   SONG  185 

though  a  whisper  reaches  me  that  school  children  are 
obtaining  permission  to  use  their  limbs  in  a  way  for  which 
there  is  good  scriptural  precedent,  and,  perhaps,  some  of  the 
good  old  Welsh  dance  measures  may  yet  be  revived.  The 
child  is  the  father  of  the  man  and  the  mother  of  the  woman. 
But,  above  all,  there  is  a  dangerous  tendency  to  alter  the 
musical  accents  of  characteristic  Welsh  airs  on  the  part  of 
some  Welsh  musicians,  whilst  some  modern  Welsh  lyrists 
violate  the  very  principles  of  Welsh  rhythm  by  breaking  up 
the  musical  measures  which  were  themselves  suggested  by 
that  rhythm. 

The  suggestion  contained  in  the  preface  to  the  Cam- 
brian Minstrelsy  that  this  collection  of  about  180  Welsh 
airs  is  a  complete  compendium  of  Welsh  song,  in  the  sense 
that  every  Welsh  air  possessing  permanent  value  has  been 
included  in  it,  appears  to  me  to  be  an  ill-advised  utterance 
on  the  part  of  the  editors  of  that  undoubtedly  interesting 
collection. 

I  am  given  to  understand  that  Mrs.  Mary  Davies,  who 
as  Mary  Davis  won  so  many  laurels  of  song,  possesses 
a  MS.  collection  of  Welsh  airs  unknown  to  the  editors 
of  the  Minstrelsy^  in  which  there  are  many  hitherto  un- 
published airs,  some  of  them  of  great  beauty.  I  under- 
stand, too,  that  my  friends  Sir  Harry  Reichel  and  Dr.  Lloyd 
Williams,  of  University  College,  Bangor,  have  between  them 
quite  a  couple  of  hundred  of  Welsh  airs,  many  of  which  are 
of  permanent  value.  I  am  glad  to  find  also  that  it  is  the 
practice  of  the  Bangor  College  authorities  not  only  to  rescue 
from  oblivion  characteristic  Welsh  melodies  which  come  in 
their  way,  but  to  mate  them  to  suitable  WTelsh  words,  and 
then  arrange  them  for  performance  at  their  University 
functions.  There  are  several  other  considerable  unpub- 
lished collections  of  Welsh  airs,  and  with  this  information 
before  me  I  cannot  think  that  the  inquiries  of  the  editors  of 
the  Cambrian  Minstrelsy  have  been  sufficiently  searching 
to  justify  their  statement  that  there  are  not  200  Welsh 


186  IRISH    LITERARY   AND   MUSICAL   STUDIES 

airs  of  permanent  value  in  existence.  Indeed,  that  state- 
ment is  a  distinct  reflection  upon  the  great  and  prolific 
musical  genius  of  the  Welsh,  who  long  before  the  time  of 
Geraldus  Cambrensis  were  singing  songs  in  four  parts,  and 
down  along  the  ages,  influenced  by  martial  and  patriotic 
traditions,  carried  music  in  the  forefront  of  their  fights  for 
freedom,  and  at  the  present  day  are  regarded  as  the  most 
actively  musical  race  in  the  British  Isles.  Wales,  too,  has 
been  generously  susceptible  to  external  musical  influences 
without  sacrificing  her  own  musical  individuality,  and  that 
she  will  never  lose  as  long  as  she  adheres  to  her  national 
language. 

Griffith  Ap  Cynan,  a  Welsh  King  by  an  Irish  Princess, 
gathered  the  Irish  and  Welsh  bards  together  to  regulate  the 
canon  of  Welsh  National  music,  and  it  is  stated  that  from 
that  day  till  the  times  of  Llewelyn  the  canon  was  kept  to. 
If  this  be  true,  the  following  statement  of  Dr.  Crotch  must 
be  taken,  not  with  a  grain,  but  with  a  pillar  of  salt : 
"  British  and  Welsh  National  music  must  be  considered  as 
one,  since  the  original  British  music  was  with  the  inhabi- 
tants driven  into  Wales.  It  must  be  owned  that  the  regular 
measure  and  diatonic  scale  of  the  Welsh  music  is  more 
congenial  to  English  taste  in  general,  and  appears  at  first 
more  natural  to  the  experienced  musician  than  those  of  the 
Irish  and  Scotch.  Welsh  music  not  only  solicits  an  accom- 
paniment, but  being  chiefly  composed  for  the  harp  is 
usually  found  with  one ;  and  indeed  in  harp  tunes  there 
are  often  solo  passages  for  the  bass  as  well  as  for  the  treble ; 
it  often  resembles  the  scientific  music  of  the  iyth  and 
1 8th  centuries,  and  there  is,  I  believe,  no  probability  that 
this  degree  of  refinement  was  an  introduction  of  later 
times.  '  Ffarwel  Ednyfed  Fychan '  is  a  tune  bearing  the 
name  of  the  councillor,  minister  and  general  of  Llewelyn 
the  Great  in  the  i3th  century,  and  yet  is  remarkable  for  the 
characteristics  for  which  I  have  mentioned  it." 

The  question  of  the  modes  of  Welsh  music  has,  I  under- 


FOLK    SONG  187 

stand,  been  recently  discussed  in  the  columns  of  Y  Brython 
from  a  very  different  point  of  view.  Doubtless  the  old  tunes 
turning  up  in  England  do  show  a  connection  between  the 
early  English  and  Welsh  tunes,  but  to  suggest  that  England 
and  Wales  were  distinguished  from  the  Irish  and  Scots  by 
not  using  modal  tunes  at  an  early  period  is  preposterous.  I 
have  had  an  interesting  letter  from  Mr.  Griffith ;  of  the 
Dolgelly  County  School,  on  this  very  question,  from  which 
I  make  a  few  quotations  :  "  I  would  like  to  call  your  atten- 
tion to  the  efforts  to  represent  the  old  folks'  performances 
of  Welsh  music.  To  name  but  a  few  of  the  points  where  it 
fails :  the  accent,  or  want  of  it;  the  melodic  intervals,  often 
not  diatonic,  .and  even  wavering,  not  through  ignorance 
or  vocal  incapacity;  the  grace  notes,  or  more  accurately 
perhaps  explanatory  or  commentatory  notes,  often  highly 
elaborate  and  queerly  timed  with  respect  to  any  possible 
bars,  and  certain  tricks  of  utterance,  perhaps  not  unconnected 
with  grace  notes.  If  the  ordinary  trained  musician  is  set  to 
copy  down  these  vocal  performances,  he  will  ignore  all  these 
things,  strictly  ruled  though  they  be  by  tradition,  and  he 
will  give  us  but  the  merest  approximation  in  the  polite 
musical  dialect  of  the  day.  He  has  often  done  even  worse 
in  Wales;  looked  at  the  whole  thing  from  a  harmony 
exercise  point  of  view,  and  calmly  altered  the  most 
characteristic  intervals,  as  in  the  case  of  the  old  hymn  tune 
'  Bangor,'  which  has  been  treated  in  this  way.  Now,  I  think 
it  is  important  that  an  attempt  should  at  once  be  made  to 
represent  these  vanishing  idioms  of  music  on  paper.  I  am 
convinced  for  one  thing  that  there  is  much  behind  them, 
a  highly  developed  art,  some  psychology,  and  possibly 
ethnology.  In  any  case,  it  is  a  shame  to  look  at  them 
dying,  and  even  to  try  to  kill  them,  as  any  successful  choir 
trainer  must  do,  and  not  to  get  a  record  of  them.  What 
about  the  phonograph  in  this  connection  ?  " 

I  cordially  agree  with  these  views  of  Mr.  Griffith's,  with 
this  small  reservation.     So-called  traditional  singing  is  often 


1 88  IRISH    LITERARY   AND   MUSICAL   STUDIES 

corrupt,  not  only  because  old  rules  are  imperfectly  re- 
membered, but  because  the  introduction  of  foreign  fashions 
in  the  way  of  variations  and  flourishes  has  been  imposed 
upon  the  original  tradition.  There  is  an  apposite  story  of 
a  Hebridean  priest,  who  was  so  annoeyd  by  the  choric 
confusion  in  his  church  created  by  the  many  variants  upon 
a  hymn  tune  sung  by  a  Gaelic-speaking  congregation,  that 
he  insisted  upon  its  being  sung  in  its  simplest  modal  form, 
with  all  grace  notes  left  out.  The  Irish  minstrels  were 
undoubtedly  much  influenced  in  the  i8th  century  by  an 
Italian  tendency  of  this  kind,  even  Carolan  showing  it  in 
many  of  his  jigs,  planxties,  and  concertos.  The  traditional 
singers  of  the  Gaelic  League  will  have  to  face  this  fact,  and 
so,  probably,  will  the  Welsh  traditional  singers  of  the  future, 
if  they  are  to  preserve  their  National  music  in  its  primitive 
purity. 

All  that  I  have  said  leads  up  to  the  necessity  of  every 
nation  regarding  it  as  a  pious  duty  to  collect  in  the  most 
perfect  manner,  to  arrange  in  the  most  perfect  manner,  and 
to  mate  to  the  most  perfect  words,  its  own  folk  tunes. 
Wales  has  yet  to  do  this.  The  airs  are  to  collect  in 
numbers  which  I  believe  will  prove  surprising.  They  will 
then  have  to  be  set  in  various  ways,  in  the  simplest  of  all 
forms  for  school  children  and  people  unable  to  reach  the 
highest  musical  culture ;  in  art  forms  for  educated  amateur 
singers  and  for  the  professional  singers,  of  whom  Wales  is 
so  justly  proud.  It  will  be  found,  I  think,  that  apart  from 
the  mere  arranging  of  these  folk  songs  for  soloists  and 
choruses  in  a  separate  form,  Welsh  music,  when  thoroughly 
explored  on  its  instrumental  and  vocal  sides,  will  prove  to 
indicate  theme  after  theme  suitable  for  treatment  in  oratorio 
or  opera,  overture  or  sonata. 

Patient,  careful  investigation  will  in  course  of  time 
enable  Welsh  musicians  to  go  very  near  at  any  rate  to 
establishing  a  chronological  order  of  the  Welsh  tunes,  by 
internal  and  external  evidence,  just  as  the  great  English 


FOLK    SONG  189 

scholars  have  pretty  well  succeeded,  after  infinite  pains,  in 
establishing  a  chronological  order  of  Shakespeare's  plays. 
At  present  we  have  little  to  go  by.  Confirmation  of 
historical  and  traditional  events  has  come  through  the 
collection  of  folk  songs  even  within  the  last  few  years. 
You  here  in  Wales,  with  your  language  living  in  every  shire 
of  the  Principality,  have  a  far  better  chance  of  recapturing 
the  fugitive  songs  and  tunes  of  your  forefathers  than  we 
Irishmen,  or  your  English  neighbours.  For,  apart  from 
your  linguistic  advantage,  there  is  a  greater  spread  of 
musical  knowledge  amongst  Welshmen,  and  a  greater 
capacity  therefore  for  taking  down  your  native  airs.  It 
has  been  suggested  that  a  Welsh  folk  song  branch  should 
be  affiliated  with  the  Folk  Song  Society,  which  acts  on 
an  international  basis  and  invites  contributions  of  folk 
songs  from  all  nations.  But  whether  you  accept  this 
suggestion  or  set  up  an  independent  folk  song  society  of 
your  own,  I  make  no  earthly  doubt  that  you  have  enough 
material  to  occupy  you  within  your  own  borders  for  at  least 
a  generation  to  come.  You  have  to  get  all  the  variants 
of  your  many  Welsh  folk  songs  into  your  musical  museum, 
and  select  from  them  the  very  best  for  national  purposes. 
You  have  to  collect  the  legends  with  which  these  folk  songs 
are  connected  and  the  local  history  to  which  they  relate. 
You  have  to  decide  upon  the  right  methods  of  playing  and 
singing  the  airs,  how  many  of  them  are  to  be  left  in  their 
old  modes,  how  many  adapted  to  modern  scales.  You  will 
have  to  decide  as  to  how  many  of  the  Welsh  lyrics  to  which 
the  airs  are  now  sung  are  worthless  from  the  literary  point 
of  view,  how  many  to  be  restored  or  improved  as  Burns 
and  Allan  Cunningham  restored  and  improved  the  Scotch 
songs.  You  must  do  as  the  Germans  are  now  doing,  that 
is  to  say,  you  must  treat  folk  song  and  the  folk  lore  con- 
nected with  it  practically  as  well  as  archaeologically. 

You   must  gather  its  mutilated   remains  as  well   as  its 
perfect    examples    into    collections   which    will    serve    as 


190  IRISH    LITERARY   AND   MUSICAL   STUDIES 

illustrative  museums.  This  material  will  be  available,  not 
only  for  giving  local  colour  and  suitable  form  to  reproduc- 
tions of  old  world  themes,  but  would  be  also  available  for 
works  of  a  larger  kind,  instrumental  and  vocal.  Much  folk 
lore  would  be  incidentally  collected  along  with  the  songs, 
and  experts  would  know  into  what  most  fitting  hands  to 
place  all  fresh  literary  and  musical  finds  with  a  view  to 
their  being  first  dealt  with  from  an  historical,  linguistic,  and 
ethnological  standpoint,  and  then,  where  advisable,  adapted 
for  current  use.  This  treatment  of  folk  songs  should  satisfy 
the  views  of  the  two  schools  of  collectors,  the  antiquarian 
and  the  artistic.* 

*  The  delivery  of  this  address,  which  was  musically  illustrated  by  a 
party  of  singers  chosen  from  the  Eisteddfod  Choir,  was  followed  by 
another  given  by  Principal  Reichel,  of  Bangor  University  College.  The 
interest  created  by  these  addresses  led  to  the  formation  of  the  now 
flourishing  Welsh  Folk  Song  Society. 


EDWARD   BUNTING 

MRS.  MILLIGAN  Fox,  the  energetic  honorary  secretary  of 
the  Irish  Folk  Song  Society,  while  purchasing  a  harp  at  a 
leading  London  warehouse  inquired  whether  any  of  the  old 
harpers  ever  called  in  there  to  buy  strings.  "Well,  no," 
replied  the  attendant ;  "  but  a  gentleman  was  in  here  not  long 
ago  who  bought  a  harp,  and  when  giving  the  order  said,  '  It 
is  only  right  that  I  should  have  a  harp  in  my  house,  for  it 
was  my  grandfather  who  preserved  the  music  of  the  ancient 
Irish  harpers.' " 

Mrs.  Fox  thus  got  into  communication  with  Dr.  Louis 
Macrory  of  Battersea,  Edward  Bunting's  grandson,  and 
eventually  obtained  from  him  and  from  his  cousin,  Mrs. 
Deane  of  Dublin,  a  large  mass  of  documents  relating  to 
their  grandfather's  famous  collections  of  Irish  music.  Much 
of  this  material  had  never  before  been  published,  and  in 
especial  the  Gaelic  originals  of  a  number  of  songs  collected 
by  Patrick  Lynch  nearly  no  years  ago,  during  a  tour 
through  Connaught. 

This  find  would  have  alone  justified  the  issue  of  such  a  book 
as  Mrs.  Milligan  Fox's  Annals  of  the  Irish  Harpers.  But 
there  is  besides  much  correspondence  relating  to  the  publica- 
tion of  Bunting's  three  collections  of  Irish  airs,  harmonised 
by  himself,  that  throws  an  exceedingly  interesting  light  upon 
the  period  of  the  Irish  Rebellion  of  1798  and  the  decade 
immediately  following  it,  and  is,  therefore,  eminently  deserv- 
ing of  preservation. 


IQ2  IRISH    LITERARY   AND    MUSICAL   STUDIES 

Edward  Bunting,  but  for  whose  collections  of  old  Irish 
music  Moore's  melodies  would  never  have  seen  the  light, 
was  the  son  of  an  English  mining  engineer,  settled  in 
the  north  of  Ireland  in  the  last  quarter  of  the  i8th  century. 
His  mother  was  a  descendant  of  one  Patrick  Gruana 
O'Quinn,  who  had  fallen  in  the  Great  Irish  Rising  of  1642. 
Left  unprovided  for  by  his  father,  he  received  so  good  a 
musical  education  from  his  brother  Anthony  that  we  find 
him  at  the  age  of  eleven  acting  as  deputy  to  a  Belfast 
organist,  Mr.  William  Ware,  and,  indeed,  so  outshining  him 
as  a  performer  that  his  employer  was  glad  to  secure  him  as 
a  permanent  assistant,  not  only  at  the  organ,  but  as  a  teacher 
of  the  pianoforte  to  his  pupils  throughout  the  neighbouring 
county.  The  zeal  of  the  boy-teacher,  reinforced  by  a 
caustic  tongue,  from  which  he  suffered  through  life,  were 
often  productive  of  ludicrous  scenes.  As  an  instance,  he 
afterwards  reported  to  Dr.  Petrie,  that  on  one  occasion 
a  lady  pupil  was  so  astonished  "at  the  audacity  of  his 
reproofs  that  she  indignantly  turned  round  upon  him  and 
well  boxed  his  ears." 

He  lodged  with  and  became  fast  friends  of  the 
McCrackens,  whose  love  for  Irish  folk  music  as  well  as  the 
influence  of  Dr.  James  MacDonnell,  the  moving  spirit  in 
the  Belfast  Harper's  Festival  of  1792,  drew  him  into 
that  collection,  study  and  arrangement  of  old  Irish  music 
which  for  the  next  fifty  years  absorbed  all  the  time  he  had 
to  spare  from  his  duties  as  a  professional  musician. 

As  Mrs.  Fox  suggests,  it  is  not  improbable  that  Dr. 
MacDonnell's  Belfast  harp  gathering  was  intended  by  him 
to  divert  attention  from  the  great  political  meeting  held  in 
Belfast  during  the  same  week  by  the  United  Irelanders,  with 
whose  methods  he  was  not  in  sympathy. 

Bunting  was  retained  by  Dr.  MacDonrell  to  take  down 
the  airs  played  by  the  nine  harpers  who  assembled  on  the 
occasion.  He  was  barely  nineteen  at  the  time,  but  the 
impression  left  upon  him  by  that  gathering  never  passed 


EDWARD   BUNTING  193 

from  his  mind,  and  nearly  fifty  years  afterwards  he  could 
thus  write  of  it : 

The  meeting  in  Belfast  was  better  attended  than  any  that  had  yet 
taken  place,  and  its  effects  were  more  permanent,  for  it  kindled  an 
enthusiasm  throughout  the  North  which  still  burns  bright  in  some 
honest  hearts.  All  the  best  of  the  old  Irish  harpers  (a  race  of  men 
then  nearly  extinct  and  now  gone  for  ever),  Denis  Hempson,  Arthur 
O'Neill,  Charles  Fanning  and  seven  others,  the  least  able  of  whom 
has  not  left  his  like  behind,  were  present.  Hempson,  who  realised  the 
antique  picture  drawn  by  Cambrensis  and  Galilei,  for  he  played  with 
long  crooked  nails,  and  in  his  performance  "the  tinkling  of  the  small 
wires  under  the  deep  tones  of  the  bass  "  was  peculiarly  thrilling,  took 
the  attention  of  the  editor  with  a  degree  of  interest  which  he  can 
never  forget. 

He  was  the  only  one  who  played  the  very  old,  the 
aboriginal  music  of  the  country,  and  this  he  did  in  a  style 
of  such  finished  excellence  as  persuaded  Bunting  that  the 
praises  of  the  old  Irish  harp  in  Cambrensis,  Fuller  and 
others,  instead  of  being,  as  the  detractors  of  the  country  are 
fond  of  asserting,  ill-considered  and  indiscriminate,  were  in 
reality  no  more  than  a  just  tribute  to  that  admirable  instru- 
ment and  its  then  professors. 

But  more  than  anything  else,  the  conversation  of  Arthur  O'Neill, 
who,  though  not  so  absolute  a  harper  as  Hempson,  was  more  a  man  of 
the  world  and  had  travelled  in  his  calling  over  all  parts  of  Ireland, 
won  and  delighted  the  editor.  All  that  the  genius  of  later  poets  and 
romance  writers  has  feigned  of  the  wandering  minstrel  was  realised  in 
this  man.  There  was  no  house  of  note  in  the  North  of  Ireland,  as  far 
as  Meath  on  the  one  hand  and  Sligo  on  the  other,  in  which  he  was  not 
well  known  and  eagerly  sought  after. 

For  four  years  after  the  Harpers'  Festival  Bunting 
devoted  himself  to  collecting  airs  in  the  counties  of  Derry 
and  Tyrone,  and  then  passed  into  Connaught,  whither  in 
his  own  words  "  he  was  invited  by  the  celebrated  Richard 
Kirwan  of  Craggs,  the  philosopher  and  founder  of  the  Royal 
Irish  Academy,  who  was  himself  an  ardent  admirer  of  Irish 


194  IRISH    LITERARY   AND    MUSICAL   STUDIES 

native  music,  and  who  was  of  such  influence  in  that  part  of 
the  country  as  procured  the  editor  a  ready  opportunity  of 
obtaining  tunes  in  both  high  and  low  circles." 

As  a  consequence  of  this  Folk  Music  Campaign, 
Bunting  in  the  year  1796  produced  his  first  volume  of  sixty- 
six  native  Irish  airs  never  before  published.  Shortly  before 
this,  after  a  picnic  to  Ram's  Island  in  Lough  Neagh,  at 
which  Russell,  the  Wolfe  Tones  and  the  McCrackens  were 
present,  Bunting  played  "  The  Parting  of  Friends,"  one  of 
the  airs  in  his  collection.  "  Overcome  by  the  pathos  of  the 
music,  and  bursting  into  tears  Mrs.  Wolfe  Tone  left  the 
room."  The  music  chosen  was  indeed  singularly  appro- 
priate, "since  tragedy  loomed  darkly"  over  the  parting 
friends;  "for  two  of  them  the  scaffold  waited,  for  a  third 
death  in  a  condemned  cell." 

Bunting's  1796  collection  fell  into  Thomas  Moore's 
hands  very  soon  after  its  publication.  "  Robert  Emmet," 
writes  Moore,  "  during  those  college  days,  used  frequently 
to  sit  by  me  at  the  pianoforte  while  I  played  over  the  airs 
from  Bunting's  Irish  collection,  and  I  remember  one  day, 
when  we  were  thus  employed,  his  starting  up  as  if  from 
a  reverie  while  I  played  "The  Fox's  Sleep,"  exclaim- 
ing passionately,  "  Oh,  that  I  were  at  the  head  of  twenty 
thousand  men  marching  to  that  air." 

To  this  air  Moore  afterwards  wrote  his  well-known  lyric 
Let  Erin  remember  the  Days  of  Old. 

Eleven  years  after  this  Moore  and  Stevenson  included 
in  their  first  number  of  sixteen  Irish  melodies  no  less  than 
eleven  from  Bunting's  first  collection,  but  with  no  acknow- 
ledgment of  the  source  from  which  they  were  taken.  Great 
bitterness  arose  out  of  this  unpermitted  appropriation,  which 
was  all  the  more  vexatious  because  Bunting  had  evidently 
intended  that  the  airs  in  his  collection  should  in  course  of 
time  appear  as  songs  and  ballads  to  words  by  other  well- 
known  lyrical  writers  of  the  day. 

The  period  between  the   issue  of  Bunting's   first   and 


EDWARD   BUNTING  jgg 

second  volumes  was  one  of  great  storm  and  stress  for  Ireland. 
It  included  the  risings  of  1798  and  1803,  in  which  his  friends 
the  McCrackens,  Russell  and  others  were  implicated,  and 
for  their  share  in  which  Wolfe  Tone,  Henry  Joy  McCracken, 
Thomas  Russell  and  Robert  Emmet  suffered  death. 

Robert  Emmet  and  Thomas  Russell  were  among  a 
group  of  lyrical  writers,  which  included  Miss  Balfour  and 
Dr.  Drennan,  whom  Bunting  drew  around  him  in  order  to 
furnish  songs  for  his  second  volume  which  might  compete 
successfully  with  those  of  Moore.  These  songs  were 
founded  upon  Irish  originals  collected  at  the  recommenda- 
tion of  the  McCrackens  by  Patrick  Lynch,  an  Irish  scholar 
and  schoolmaster  who  had  toured  Connaught,  folk-song 
collecting,  first  by  himself,  and  then  along  with  Bunting" 
Some  of  these  Gaelic  songs  were  translated,  though  too 
artificially,  into  English  lyrics  by  Miss  Balfour  and  others ; 
Bunting  had  also  made  a  great  but  unsuccessful  effort  to 
induce  Thomas  Campbell,  the  poet,  to  take  a  leading  part 
in  this  work  and  so  come  into  competition  with  Moore,  but 
he  failed  to  secure  the  Scotch  poet  in  this  capacity,  though 
Campbell  contributed  three  poems  to  the  collection.  Then 
a  most  untoward  event  occurred.  Thomas  Russell,  the 
prenx  chevalier  of  the  United  Irelanders  and  one  of  the 
Irish  Folk  Song  band,  was  apprehended  and  executed  on 
the  evidence  of  Patrick  Lynch,  who,  on  suspicion  of  com- 
plicity with  him,  had  been  fixed  upon  to  identify  Russell, 
and  who,  in  order  to  save  his  own  neck,  had  reluctantly 
given  damning  evidence  against  his  friend  and  employer. 
This,  of  course,  caused  Lynch  to  be  dismissed  from  the 
employment  of  the  McCrackens,  and  Dr.  McDonnell,  who 
had  shown  Loyalist  proclivities  after  Russell's  rising,  was, 
for  the  time  being,  in  their  black  books  and  Bunting's,' 
though  they  subsequently  made  friends  with  him  again. 

The  band  of  enthusiastic  folk  song  collectors  °was  then 
divided,  and  the  publication  of  Bunting's  second  volume 
languished.  When  it  ultimately  appeared  in  1809,  Moore 

p  2 


196  IRISH    LITERARY   AND    MUSICAL   STUDIES 

and  Stevenson  at  once  proceeded  to  pillage  airs  from  it,  and 
the  poet  had  a  very  easy  task  in  excelling  the  poor  transla- 
tions from  Irish  originals  that  served  for  its  lyrics. 

Moore,  at  a  later  period,  was  perfectly  frank  in  replying 
to  Bunting's  charge  that  the  original  airs  had  been  altered 
by  Stevenson  to  suit  his  words.  In  an  entry  in  his  diary 
of  July  isth,  1840,  he  thus  writes:  "Bunting  lays  the 
blame  of  all  these  alterations  upon  Stevenson,  but  poor  Sir 
John  was  entirely  innocent  of  them ;  as  the  whole  task  of 
selecting  the  airs,  and  in  some  instances  shaping  them  to 
the  general  sentiment  which  the  melody  appeared  to  me  to 
express,  was  undertaken  solely  by  myself."  "  Had  I  not 
ventured,"  he  adds  in  his  diary  for  the  same  date,  "  on  these 
very  admissible  liberties,  many  of  the  songs  now  most 
known  and  popular  would  have  been  still  sleeping  with  all 
their  authentic  dross  about  them  in  Mr.  Bunting's  first 
volume.  The  same  charge  is  brought  by  him  respecting 
those  airs  which  I  took  from  the  second  volume  of  his 
collection." 

Bunting  married,  as  an  old  bachelor,  Miss  Mary  Ann 
Chapman,  the  daughter  of  Mrs.  Chapman,  a  widow  and 
Lady  Principal  of  a  school  in  Dublin.  His  marriage, 
which  proved  an  extremely  happy  one,  brought  Bunting 
from  Belfast  to  Dublin.  This  uprooting  of  his  old  connec- 
tions, though  difficult,  was  wise,  for  it  enabled  him  to  break 
away  from  habits  of  life  in  which  he  was  becoming  con- 
firmed, and  which  were  casual  and  unwise.  His  fresh  start 
in  Dublin  proved  satisfactory  in  every  respect.  He  secured 
plenty  of  musical  work,  and  the  companionship  of  men  like 
Petrie,  Stokes,  O'Curry  and  others  kept  up  the  flame  of  his 
enthusiasm  for  his  life  work,  the  preservation  and  publication 
of  native  Irish  music.  Yet  it  was  not  until  after  a  long 
interval  that  Bunting  in  1840  produced  his  last  collection, 
and  as  it  proved  his  magnum  opus.  It  was  received  with 
high  commendation  by  the  leading  critics,  and  assured  the 
editor's  lasting  fame.  It  is  well  described  by  Robert 


EDWARD   BUNTING 


197 


Chambers  "  as  a  national  work  of  the  deepest  antiquarian  and 
historical  interest.  Were  we  to  institute  a  literary  comparison 
we  could  say  that  Moore's  Irish  melodies  had  about  them 
all  the  fascination  of  poetry  and  romance,  Bunting's  col- 
lections all  the  sterner  charms  of  truth  and  history."  He 
adds,  "  When  we  hear  Sir  John  Stevenson's  Irish  melodies 
played  by  a  young  lady  on  the  pianoforte,  or  even  on  the 
pedal  harp,  we  do  not  hear  the  same  music  which  O'Cahan, 
Carolan  and  Hempson  played.  It  is  as  much  altered  as 
Homer  in  the  translation  of  Pope.  For  the  true  present- 
ment of  this  music  to  modern  ears  we  require  the  old  sets 
as  preserved  in  the  volumes  of  Bunting  and  'the  Irish 
harp'  played  by  an  Irish  harper."  Dr.  Petrie  concludes 
his  memoir  of  his  great  predecessor  in  Irish  Folk  Song 
collecting  with  these  words  :  "  The  publication  of  his  last 
volume  was,  for  the  very  few  years  which  he  survived  it, 
not  only  a  matter  of  the  greatest  happiness  and  consolation 
to  him,  but  it  excited  him  to  devote  the  leisure  of  those 
years  to  the  rearrangement  of  the  old  airs  and  to  terminate 
his  labours  by  leaving  behind  him  a  complete,  uniform  and 
very  nearly  perfect  collection  of  Irish  music." 
Moore's  verdict  was  a  very  different  one  : 

Received  from  Cramers  and  Co.  a  copy  of  Bunting's  newly 
published  collection  of  Irish  Airs,  which  they  have  often  written  to  me 
about,  as  likely,  they  thought,  to  furnish  materials  for  a  continuance 
of  the  Melodies.  Tried  them  over  with  some  anxiety,  as,  had  they 
contained  a  sufficient  number  of  beautiful  airs  to  make  another  volume, 
I  should  have  felt  myself  bound  to  do  the  best  I  could  with  them, 
though  still  tremblingly  apprehensive  lest  a  failure  should  be  the 
result. 

Was  rather  relieved  I  confess  on  finding,  with  the  exception  of  a  few 
airs,  which  I  have  already  made  use  of,  the  whole  volume  is  a  mere 
mess  of  trash. 

Considering  the  thorn  I  have  been  in  poor  Bunting's  side  by 
supplanting  him  in  the  one  great  object  of  his  life  (the  connection  of 
his  name  with  the  fame  of  Irish  Music),  the  temper  in  which  he  now 
speaks  of  my  success  (for  some  years  since  he  was  rather  termagant  on 
the  subject)  is  not  a  little  creditable  to  his  good  nature  and  good 


sense. 


198  IRISH    LITERARY   AND   MUSICAL   STUDIES 

Posterity  has  reversed  Moore's  shallow  musical  judgment. 
Sir  Charles  Villiers  Stanford  has,  by  an  act  of  historical 
justice,  largely  restored  Moore's  melodies  to  the  forms  in 
which  they  are  presented  by  Bunting. 

"  The  mess  of  trash "  in  Bunting's  third  volume  has, 
moreover,  furnished  Sir  Charles  with  many  beautiful  airs 
for  his  own  arrangement  to  lyrics  suggested  by  the  spirit  and 
written  in  the  measures  of  the  old  Gaelic  songs. 

Mrs.  Milligan  Fox  and  her  sister,  Miss  Alice  Milligan, 
whose  Irish  scholarship  is  evident  throughout  The  Annals  of 
the  Irish  Harpers^  have  taken  in  hand  a  good  piece  of  work 
in  dealing  with  the  Bunting  MSS.  and  correspondence  as  they 
have  done.  But  in  a  future  edition  the  O'Neill  and  Lynch 
diaries  might  be  condensed  with  advantage,  and  some 
of  the  additional  space  thus  secured  allotted  to  further 
translations  from  the  Gaelic  originals  to  which  Bunting's  airs 
were  sung. 

Limits  of  space  make  it  impossible  to  enter  into  two  or 
three  very  interesting  speculations  raised  by  Mrs.  Milligan 
Fox,  which  we  hope  will  be  publicly  discussed.  Was 
O'Curry  justified  in  discrediting  the  list  of  Irish  musical 
terms  supplied  to  Bunting  by  Arthur  O'Neill,  who  was,  by 
all  accounts,  an  honourable  man  ?  Was  Petrie,  as  is  now 
generally  believed,  justified  in  his  contention  that  the  form 
of  Old  Irish  airs  has  been  more  correctly  preserved  by  the 
Irish  Folk  singers  than  by  the  Irish  harpers,  to  whose 
records  of  them  Bunting  pins  his  faith  ? 

Lastly,  do  not  the  Irish  Harp  tunes  stand,  as  a  rule, 
quite  apart  from  the  airs  of  the  Irish  Folk  songs,  as  the 
Welsh  Harp  tunes  are  proved  to  stand  apart  from  the  airs 
of  the  Welsh  Folk  songs  ?  Is  it  not  therefore  reasonable  to 
suppose  that  airs  in  pentatonic  or  other  incomplete  scales 
which  still  exist  in  Ireland  and  Wales  side  by  side  with 
diatonic  tunes  dating  from  the  twelfth  century,  at  any  rate, 
take  their  origin  in  the  main  either  from  the  use  of  early- 
gapped  instruments,  or  from  the  secular  use  amongst  the 


EDWARD   BUNTING  199 

Irish  and  Welsh  Catholic  peasantry  of  their  Church's  earliest 
forms  of  plainsong  ?  Can  any  direct  connection  be  set  up, 
as  suggested  by  Petrie,  between  Persian  and  Indian  lullabies 
and  those  of  Ireland,  and  can  such  early  Irish  airs  as  the 
Plough  tunes  be  proved  to  have  a  like  connection  with 
the  East? 


200  IRISH    LITERARY   AND    MUSICAL   STUDIES 


GEORGE   PETRIE  AS  AN   ARTIST  AND 
MAN   OF  LETTERS 

GEORGE  PETRIE  was  born  in  Dublin  on  the  ist  January, 
1790,  of  a  Scotch  mother  and  Irish  father,  though  it  must 
be  owned  that  his  father  was  not  of  Irish  stock,  although  he 
had  cast  in  his  lot  with  our  fellow-countrymen,  being  the 
son  of  a  Scotchman  settled  in  Dublin.  He  was  an  eminent 
Portrait  and  Miniature  Painter,  and  was  a  man  of  literary 
culture  as  well.  He  was  at  pains  to  give  his  son  the  best 
education  available,  and  therefore  sent  him  to  the  school  of 
Mr.  VVhyte,  of  Grafton  Street,  and  there,  sitting  perhaps 
at  the  same  desk  at  which  Thomas  Moore  and  Richard 
Brinsley  Sheridan  had  sat  before  him,  he  acquired  that 
sound  knowledge  of  the  English  and  classical  languages 
which  he  afterwards  turned  to  such  good  account  when  he 
became  a  man  of  letters. 

As  a  boy  George  Petrie  took  after  his  father's  taste  for 
Art,  and  was  allowed  to  assist  him  in  painting  miniatures 
at  an  early  age.  Indeed,  when  only  fifteen  he  gained  the 
Silver  Medal  for  a  group  of  figures  in  the  School  of  the 
Dublin  Society ;  hence  his  father,  though  he  had  intended 
him  for  the  profession  of  Surgery,  was  not  loath  to  allow 
him  to  follow  the  bent  of  his  genius  and  to  devote  himself 
to  landscape  painting,  being  the  more  inclined  to  this 
course  from  the  fact  that  the  boy  was  delicate  and  more 
suited  to  an  open  air  than  to  an  indoor  life. 

One  of  the  early  recollections  which  Dr.  Petrie  has  left 
on  record  was  of  a  touching  scene,  of  which  when  a  boy  he 


GEORGE   PETRIE  2OI 

was  an  unwilling  spectator.  His  artist  father  had  executed 
a  commission  for  Sarah  Curran,  daughter  to  that  distin- 
guished orator  and  member  of  the  Irish  Bar,  John  Philpot 
Curran.  She  had  been  betrothed  to  Robert  Emmet,  whose 
life  paid  the  penalty  of  his  complicity  in  the  rebellion  of 
1803;  and  knowing  that  Mr.  James  Petrie  had  painted 
Emmet,  she  requested  that  a  portrait  from  memory,  aided 
by  his  former  studies  of  her  lover,  should  be  painted  for 
her,  and  that  when  completed  she  might  visit  his  studio 
alone.  A  day  and  hour  were  named  by  the  artist ;  but  his 
boy,  unaware  of  the  arrangement,  was  seated  in  a  recess  of 
the  window,  concealed  by  a  curtain,  when  the  lady,  closely 
veiled,  entered  the  room.  She  approached  the  easel,  and 
gazed  long  and  earnestly  on  the  picture  of  her  lover,  then 
leaned  her  head  against  the  wall  and  wept  bitterly.  The 
boy,  attracted  by  her  sobs,  knew  not  how  to  act.  She  was 
quite  unconscious  of  his  presence,  and  before  he  could 
make  up  his  mind  what  he  ought  to  do,  she  recovered  her 
self-control,  drew  down  her  veil,  and  left  the  room. 

At  the  Drawing  School  of  the  Dublin  Society  Petrie 
met  with  Danby  and  O'Conor,  and  these  three  young  Irish 
artists  became  bosom  friends.  Up  to  the  year  1809,  his 
studies  as  landscape  painter  were  carried  on  in  the  counties 
of  Dublin  and  Wicklow,  and  with  such  enthusiasm  that  he 
would  start  on  foot  at  nightfall  when  his  day's  work  was 
done,  so  that  by  walking  all  night  he  might  reach,  before 
sunrise,  some  chosen  spot  for  study  among  the  Wicklow 
mountains.  In  the  following  year  he  first  visited  Wales, 
and  re-visited  it  a  few  years  afterwards  with  his  friends 
Danby  and  O'Conor. 

Dr.  Stokes,  to  whose  fine  biography  of  Petrie  I  am 
indebted  for  the  bulk  of  my  information  about  him,  is  of 
opinion  that  the  influence  of  these  tours  in  Wales  and  of 
the  Welsh  scenery  can  be  as  '  definitely  traced  through 
all  Petrie's  works  as  that  of  his  Yorkshire  surroundings 
upon  Turner's  art. 


202  IRISH    LITERARY   AND   MUSICAL   STUDIES 

In  1820,  the  taste  for  illustrated  Landscape  Annuals 
was  at  its  height,  and  this  helped  forward  the  art  of  water- 
colour  painting  of  which  Turner  was  the  exponent  in 
England,  and  Petrie  had  become  the  exponent  in  Ireland ; 
indeed,  he  supplied  no  less  than  ninety-six  illustrations  to 
Cromwell's  Excursions  in  Ireland,  twenty-one  to  Brewer's 
Beauties  of  Ireland,  sixteen  to  Fisher's  historical  Guide  to 
Ancient  and  Modern  Dublin,  besides  contributing  to  other 
works,  such  as  Wright's  Tours  and  the  Guide  to  Wicklow 
and  Killarney. 

A  review  of  Petrie's  Art  work  in  these  Landscape 
Annuals  and  Guides,  published  in  the  Dublin  Saturday 
Magazine  of  March,  1866,  criticises  Petrie's  talents  in  these 
fitting  terms : 

His  refined  taste  and  love  of  truth  influenced  him  even  at  the 
commencement  of  his  career  to  discard  all  conventional  tricks  of  Art. 
He  was  emphatically  our  first  draughtsman  ;  and  so  accurate  was  his 
pencil  that  a  drawing  by  Petrie  made  at  any  period  of  his  artistic  life 
possesses  the  value  for  truthfulness  of  a  photograph.  But  he  was  more 
than  a  draughtsman,  his  drawings  and  pictures  were  peculiarly  imbued 
with  that  indescribable  charm  which  for  want  of  a  better  word  has 
been  styled  "  feeling,"  and  which  only  genius  of  the  highest  order  can 
confer.  His  simplest  sketch  assumed  the  character  of  a  painted  poem  ; 
a  green  hillside,  a  shattered  cross,  a  ruined  watch  tower,  as  treated  by 
his  genius,  became  the  subject  of  a  picture  the  indescribable  charm  of 
which  riveted  the  attention  and  set  the  imagination  to  work. 

But  the  letterpress  illustrated  by  him  in  these  books  of 
excursions  and  tours  was  as  a  rule  so  inferior,  that  Petrie 
conceived  the  idea  of  bringing  out  a  book  of  the  kind  both 
written  and  illustrated  by  himself.  His  tours  in  Aran  and 
other  parts  of  Ireland  so  charmingly  recorded  by  him 
formed  the  basis  for  such  a  work,  though  he  never  com- 
pleted it 

Is  it  too  late  for  an  enterprising  publisher  to  make  a 
selection  of  Petrie's  engravings  in  the  published  tour  books, 
combining  them  with  the  letterpress  in  his  journal,  and 
that  contributed  by  him  to  the  Dublin  and  Irish  Penny 


GEORGE   PETRIE  203 

Magazines  ?      It   would   make    a    delightful    and    unique 
volume. 

As  Dr.  Stokes  points  out,  "  Petrie's  Art  works  may  be 
divided  into  two  classes ;  his  pictures  which  are  simply 
landscapes  and  those  which  illustrate  National  antiquities 
in  a  beautiful  setting  of  natural  scenery.  The  most  striking 
characteristics  of  his  landscape  works  are  the  power  of 
conveying  simple  poetry ;  the  sense  of  solitude  without 
gloom  ;  his  skilful  use  of  effects  with  storm  and  haze  in 
giving  grandeur  to  scenes  otherwise  insignificant,  and  his 
delicate,  aerial  tones  and  sunlit  mists.  Perhaps  the  highest 
effort  of  his  genius  as  a  landscape  painter  is  '  The  Home 
of  the  Herons.'  The  scene  is  laid  in  Lough  Atree,  and 
embraces  the  little  group  of  islands  from  which  the  lake 
has  derived  its  name.  These  islands  are  adorned  with 
trees  of  naked  growth,  and  the  largest  island  of  the  group 
has  been  taken  possession  of  by  the  herons,  which  have 
been  allowed  to  retain  it  as  a  sanctuary  and  a  home.  The 
day  has  been  wet,  but  towards  evening  the  clouds  have 
dispersed,  the  sun  bursts  forth,  and  the  mists,  rising  as 
steam  from  the  mountain  sides  in  the  western  light,  form  a 
rainbow  tinted  veil  of  a  most  ideal  loveliness,  softening  the 
rugged  outlines  of  the  peaked  and  barren  mountains,  and 
mingling  their  distant  summits  with  the  delicate  blue  of  the 
heaven  above.  The  delicacy,  tenderness,  and  transparency 
in  the  painting  of  this  picture,  the  high  imaginative  power 
shown  in  the  treatment  of  the  subject,  make  it  worthy  of  a 
place  among  the  highest  efforts  of  landscape  Art  in  the 
Kingdom,"  and  Dr.  Stokes  thus  finely  describes  what  he 
considers  to  be  the  most  remarkable  specimen  of  those  of 
his  works  which  illustrate  our  National  antiquities  : 

The  subject  of  this  picture  is  one  of  the  Celtic  sepulchural 
monuments  of  Pagan  times  commonly  called  Druidical  Temples 
situated  on  the  Caah  Hill  near  Dungiven  in  the  county  of  London- 
derry. This  circle  of  monumental  stone  is  one  of  several  still  remain- 
ing on  the  mountain,  which,  according  to  the  tradition  of  the  peasantry 


204  IRISH    LITERARY   AND   MUSICAL   STUDIES 

of  the  district,  are  the  tombs  of  the  chiefs  slain  in  a  great  battle  fought 
here,  and  from  these  the  mountain  received  its  name  of  Caah  or  Battle 
Hill.  The  tall  stones  raise  their  dark  forms  against  the  saffron  sky, 
through  which  the  evening  star  is  just  appearing  and  shedding  its  soft 
light,  while  a  few  cattle  stand  perfectly  motionless  on  the  horizon. 
The  sense  of  solitude  and  breathless  silence  conveyed  in  this  picture, 
and  the  deep  poetry  in  the  simple  treatment  of  the  whole,  can  be  felt 
only  by  those  who  have  seen  it. 

The  poetical  influence  affecting  Petrie's  Art  work  is  that 
of  Wordsworth,  of  whom  he  was  a  devoted  admirer,  for  in 
that  poet  he  found  "  a  responsive  chord  to  his  own  genius 
— calm,  sober,  cheerful  and  meditative." 

I  will  add  to  the  above  views  of  his  Art  a  quotation 
from  an  Eloge  on  Petrie,  delivered  shortly  after  his  death 
before  the  Royal  Irish  Academy  by  my  father,  the  late 
Bishop  of  Limerick,  when  he  was  its  President : 

"  Petrie's  pencil  was,  for  many  years,  put  into  requisition  by  those 
who  sought  for  the  most  perfect  illustrations  of  Irish  scenery  and 
topography.  His  drawings  were  engraved  by  the  most  celebrated 
engravers,  Goodall,  Higham,  Barber,  Wickel,  Brewer,  George 
Cooke,  Greigg,  Millar,  and  Stoners,  all  of  whom  remarked  of  his 
works,  'beautifully  outlined.'  The  pictures  exhibited  by  him  in 
London  and  Dublin  attracted  the  admiration  of  the  most  accomplished 
Art  critics.  I  have  some  idea,"  writes  my  father,  "  of  the  causes  of 
his  success.  I  believe  that  it  was  due  in  the  first  instance  to  the 
truthfulness  with  which  he  represented  the  grace  and  harmony  of  the 
lines  traced  by  Nature  herself  in  the  real  landscape.  He  seems  to 
have  perfectly  appreciated  their  characteristics.  He  knew  that  these 
lines  are  produced  by  natural  agencies  of  various  kinds  working 
simultaneously — by  forces  which  shape  the  outline  of  a  mountain,  as 
well  as  by  those  which  determine  the  form  of  a  leaf,  it  was  his  nice 
perception  or,  call  it  if  you  will,  an  intuitive  feeling — of  the  proper 
flow  of  each  separate  line  and  of  its  relation  to  the  other  lines  in  the 
picture  which  enabled  him  to  produce  drawings  almost  matchless  in 
delicacy  and  grace.  His  skill  as  a  draughtsman  was  transcendent, 
critics  allege  that  as  a  colourist  he  was  less  successful.  It  is  not  given 
to  the  same  man  to  excel  in  every  branch  of  his  art.  Still  it  must  be 
said  of  him  that  he  showed  a  fine  perception  of  harmony  and  balance 
of  colour,  even  though  we  may  admit  that  he  was  sometimes  deficient 
in  force.  But  the  artist  who  could  paint  such  pictures  as  his  '  Pass  of 


GEORGE   PETRIE 


205 


Llanberis,'  his  '  Walk  in  Connemara,'  his  '  Shruel  Bridge,'  and  '  The 
Home  of  the  Herons,'  has  secured  for  himself  a  high  place  in  the  list  of 
water-colour  painters.  These  are  works  in  which  the  artistic  treatment  of 
the  subject  manifests  an  intense  love  of  nature  and  a  familiar  acquain- 
tance with  the  expressions  of  her  everchanging  face.  And  they  possess 
a  higher  merit,  They  are  not  the  products  of  a  merely  meditative, 
imitative  Art,  they  are  poetical  in  their  conception  and  full  of 
imaginative  power.  Petrie  had  attained  to  a  very  distinguished 
position  as  a  painter,  his  brother  artists  in  Ireland  acknowledged  his 
eminence  by  conferring  upon  him  the  honourable  office  of  President  of 
their  National  Academy,  and  artists  of  the  highest  repute  in  England, 
by  their  correspondence  and  their  friendship,  bore  testimony  to  the 
respect  which  they  entertained  for  him  as  a  proiessional  compeer." 

Petrie's  first  contribution  to  Irish  literature,  as  might 
have  been  expected,  took  the  form  of  art  criticism.  In  his 
six  and  twentieth  year  he  wrote  a  series  of  leading  articles 
in  the  Dublin  Examiner,  in  which  he  deals  with  the  condi- 
tion of  the  fine  arts  in  Ireland,  and  more  particularly  on  the 
attempts  which  had  been  made  to  establish  an  Academy  of 
Arts  in  Dublin  which  had  led  to  the  exhibition  of  works 
of  Irish  painters,  between  the  years  1809  and  1816.  The 
exhibitions  had  proved  successful  in  the  first  instance,  but 
the  Society  had  split  up  into  two,  the  Irish  and  Hibernian 
Societies  of  Arts,  yet  these  two  bodies  came  together  again 
and  finally  coalesced  with  the  Dublin  Society. 

Public  support  of  Art  at  first  promising  had  died  down, 
and  indeed  the  general  absence  of  culture  amongst  the 
artists  and  the  want  of  public  spirit  which  had  followed  the 
provincialising  of  the  Irish  capital  consequent  on  the 
establishment  of  the  Union  were  influences  greatly  adverse 
to  National  Art.  In  five  further  articles  his  criticisms 
became  more  general.  He  showed  that  the  decline  of 
European  art  was  due  to  inferiority  in  education  amongst 
modern  artists,  sculptors  and  architects,  as  compared  with 
that  of  earlier  workers  in  these  fields  of  art,  and  to  a 
tendency  to  look  too  much  at  the  business  side  of  art, 
a  view  according  to  which  success  depended  upon  a 
cultivation  of  the  imitative  powers ;  while  Ruskin's  dictum 


2O6  IRISH    LITERARY   AND   MUSICAL   STUDIES 

that  Art  is  to  be  considered  as  a  writing  or  language,  the 
value  of  which  must  depend  upon  what  the  artist  has  in 
him  to  say,  was  unrecognised  by  the  public  and  by  the 
artists  themselves.  Petrie  rightly  pointed  out  the  tendency 
in  the  training  of  the  schools  of  the  Dublin  Society  to  place 
the  special  before  the  general  education  of  its  students,  and 
the  consequent  product  of  half  educated,  illiterate  artists. 
Dr.  Stokes  comments  that  this  independent  spirit  and 
severity  of  stricture  upon  the  conduct  of  public  men  at  a 
time  when  independent  thought  was  almost  a  crime  and 
independent  action  was  nearly  impossible,  was  admirable  in 
a  young  and  struggling  artist.  Yet  Petrie  lived  to  illustrate 
these  critical  views  by  his  own  works  as  a  draughtsman  and 
painter. 

He  contributed  to  the  Dublin  literary  journals  of  1816 
to  1818,  but  it  was  not  until  the  year  1832  that,  in  company 
with  the  Rev.  Caesar  Otway,  he  started  the  Dublin  Penny 
Journal  "on  new  and  exclusively  national  grounds  and 
with  national  as  well  as  useful  objects  in  view."  Politics 
and  sectarian  religion  were  excluded  from  the  purview  of 
the  magazine.  The  subjects  chiefly  chosen  were,  however, 
such  as  were  most  likely  to  attract  the  attention  of  the 
Irish  people  next  to  those  of  politics  and  polemics,  viz.  :  the 
history,  biography,  poetry,  antiquities,  natural  history, 
legends  and  traditions  of  the  country.  The  journal 
appeared  on  the  30th  June,  1832,  and  was  conducted  with 
great  spirit,  ability  and  success  for  more  than  a  year,  after 
which  it  passed  into  other  hands,  declined  in  literary  quality 
and  passed  out  of  existence. 

Ten  years  later  Petrie  became  sole  editor  of  another 
work  of  the  same  aim  and  character,  the  Irish  Penny 
Journal,  which  he  carried  on  for  a  year.  "  There  is  no 
more  striking  evidence  of  the  absence  of  public  opinion  or 
the  want  of  interest  in  the  history  of  the  country  on  the 
part  of  Irish  society,"  writes  Dr.  Stokes,  "  than  the  failure  of 
these  two  works,  and  it  is  remarkable  that  the  principal 


GEORGE   PETRIE  207 

demand  for  them  was  from  London  and  the  provincial 
towns  of  England." 

In  literary  merit,  indeed,  they  were  anything  but 
failures,  as  might  be  expected,  when  it  is  considered  that 
besides  the  names  of  Otway,  Petrie  and  O'Donovan,  we 
have  among  the  contributors  to  the  second  work  mentioned 
those  of  O'Curry,  Wills,  Anster,  Ferguson,  Mangan,  Aubrey 
de  Vere  and  Carleton.  It  is  told  of  Southey,  that  he  used 
to  say,  when  speaking  of  these  volumes,  that  he  prized  them 
as  among  the  most  valuable  of  his  library. 

In  bidding  farewell  to  his  readers  of  the  Irish  Penny 
Journal,  Petrie  observes  that  the  commendations  of  the 
press  "  have  not  been  altogether  undeserved,  and  that  the 
proprietors  indulge  the  pleasing  conviction  that  the  volume 
now  brought  to  a  termination  will  live  in  the  literature  of 
Ireland  as  one  almost  exclusively  Irish."  This  hope  has 
been  justified.  These  two  volumes,  the  Dublin  Penny  Journal 
and  the  Irish  Penny  Journal,  now  fetch  a  high  price,  and 
though  the  illustrations  are,  to  a  large  extent,  antiquated, 
much  of  the  letterpress  deserves  reprinting;  indeed,  not  a  few 
of  the  poems  and  stories  contained  in  these  journals,  such 
as  Mangan's  The  One  Mystery  and  some  of  Carleton's  Irish 
Sketches,  have  already  passed  into  Anglo-Irish  Literature. 

As  a  specimen  of  Petrie's  literary  powers  at  this  period 
a  passage  from  his  account  of  Monasterboice  in  the  Irish 
Penny  Journal  may  be  cited  : 

In  its  present  deserted  and  ruined  state  it  is  a  scene  of  the 
deepest  and  most  solemn  interest ;  and  the  mind  must  indeed  be  dull 
and  earthly  in  which  it  fails  to  awaken  feelings  of  touching  and 
permanent  interest ;  silence  and  solitude  the  most  profound  are 
impressed  on  all  its  time-worn  features  ;  we  are  among  the  dead  only  ; 
and  we  are  forced,  as  it  were,  to  converse  with  the  men  of  other  days. 
With  all  our  frequent  visits  to  these  ruins,  we  never  saw  a  single 
human  being  amongst  them  but  once. 

It  was  during  a  terrific  thunderstorm,  which  obliged  us  to  seek 
shelter  behind  one  of  the  stone  crosses  for  an  hour.  The  rain 
poured  down  in  impetuous  torrents,  and  the  clouds  were  so  black  as  to 


208  IRISH    LITERARY   AND   MUSICAL   STUDIES 

give  the  appearance  of  night.  It  was  at  such  an  awful  hour,  that  a 
woman  of  middle  age,  finely  formed,  and  of  a  noble  countenance, 
entered  the  cemetery,  and,  regardless  of  the  storm  raging  around,  flung 
herself  down  upon  a  grave,  and  commenced  singing  an  Irish  lamenta- 
tion in  tones  of  heartrending  and  surpassing  beauty.  This  wail  she 
carried  on  as  long  as  we  remained  ;  and  her  voice  coming  on  the  ear 
between  the  thunderpeals  had  an  effect  singularly  wild  and  unearthly  ; 
it  would  be  fruitless  to  attempt  a  description  of  it. 

The  reader,  if  he  knows  what  an  Irishwoman's  song  of  sorrow  is, 
must  imagine  the  effect  it  would  have  at  such  a  moment  among  those 
lightning  shattered  ruins,  and  chanted  by  such  a  living  vocal  monument 
of  human  woe  and  desolation. 


As  Dr.  Stokes  points  out,  Petrie  may  be  said  to  be  the 
discoverer  of  the  Aran  Islands,  at  least  from  the  antiquarian 
point  of  view.  He  paid  them  two  visits  of  considerable 
duration,  the  first  in  the  twenties  of  last  century,  before  the 
islands  had  been  as  much  influenced  from  the  mainland  as 
they  have  gradually  become.  Indeed,  an  interesting  con- 
trast might  be  made  by  a  comparison  between  Dr.  Petrie's 
experiences  on  the  islands  and  those  of  Mr.  J.  M.  Synge. 
It  is,  as  a  descriptive  writer  and  painter  of  character,  such 
as  he  found  it  in  Aran,  that  we  are  here  concerned  with 
Dr.  Petrie's  relation  to  these  islands.  Quoting,  with  three 
notes  of  exclamation,  Pinkerton's  statement  that  the  wild 
Irish  are  at  this  day  known  to  be  some  of  the  veriest 
savages  in  the  globe,  Petrie  proceeds  to  show  that  after 
visiting  Aran  out  of  a  desire  to  meet  the  islanders  who  were 
reputed  to  be  the  most  primitive  people  within  the  five 
corners  of  Ireland,  he  found  them  to  be  where  uncon- 
taminated,  as  in  Aranmore  and  Innisheer,  a  brave  and  hardy 
race,  industrious  and  enterprising,  simple  and  innocent,  but 
also  thoughtful  and  intelligent ;  credulous,  and  in  matters  of 
faith  what  persons  of  a  different  creed  would  call  super- 
stitious, but,  being  out  of  the  reach  of  religious  animosity, 
still  strangers  to  bigotry  and  intolerance.  Lying  and 
drinking — the  vices  which  Arthur  Young  in  his  time 


GEORGE   PETR1E  209 

regarded  as  appertaining  to  the  Irish  character,  formed  at 
least  no  part  in  it  in  Aran.  Not  that  they  were  rigidly 
temperate,  instances  of  excess  followed  by  the  usual  Irish 
consequences  of  broken  heads  did  occasionally  occur ;  such 
could  not  but  be  expected  when  their  convivial  temperament 
and  dangerous  and  laborious  occupations  are  remembered. 
"  But,"  he  adds,  "  they  never  swear,  and  they  have  a 
high  sense  of  decency  and  propriety,  honour  and  justice. 
In  appearance  they  are  healthy,  comely  and  prepossessing; 
in  their  dress,  with  few  exceptions,  clean  and  comfortable! 
In  manners  serious  yet  cheerful  and  easily  excited  to  gaiety; 
frank  and  familiar  in  conversation,  and  to  strangers  polite 
and  respectful;  but  at  the  same  time  wholly  free  from 
servile  adulation.  They  are  communicative,  but  not  too 
loquacious;  inquisitive  after  information,  but  delicate  in 
asking  it  and  grateful  for  its  communication." 

Petrie  describes  four  typical  Aran  islanders  of  his  day, 
Mr.  O' Flaherty,  one  of  the  two  aristocrats  of  the  islands' 
the  Rev.  Francis  O'Flaherty,  their  venerable  pastor,  Torn 
O'Flaherty,  who  combined  the  honourable  practice  of 
medicine  with  the  less  distinguished  calling  of  a  tailor,  and 
lastly  Molly  M'Auley,  the  wise  woman,  though  not  in  the 
sense  of  being  a  witch;  but  space  only  permits  of  the 
presentation  of  full-length  portraits  of  the  three  O'Flahertys, 
Mr.  O'Flaherty,  Tom  the  Tailor  and  Father  Francis 
O'Flaherty. 

Mr.  O'Flaherty  may  be  justly  called  the  pater  patria  of  the 
Araners.  He  is  the  reconciler  in  all  differences,  the  judge  in  all 
disputes,  the  adviser  in  all  enterprises,  and  the  friend  in  all  things.  A 
sound  understanding  and  the  kindest  of  hearts  make  him  competent 
to  be  all  those  ;  and  his  decisions  ar  enever  murmured  against  or  his 
affection  met  by  ingratitude.  Of  the  love  they  bear  him  many  instances 
might  be  adduced,  but  the  following  will  be  deemed  sufficient,  and 
too  honourable  both  to  them  and  him  to  be  omitted. 

In  1822  a  great  number  of  the  islanders  had  determined  to  emigrate 
to  America.  A  ship  lay  at  anchor  at  Galway  to  convey  them,  and 
they  proceeded  thither  accompanied  by  Mr.  O'Flaherty,  to  aid  them 

P 


210  IRISH    LITERARY   AND   MUSICAL   STUDIES 

to  the  last  with  friendship  and  advice.  Several  days  elapsed  before 
the  vessel  was  ready  to  set  sail,  and  Mr.  O'Flaherty  still  continued  with 
them  ;  but  at  last  the  hour  to  bid  an  everlasting  adieu  arrived.  They 
must  know  the  Araners  that  could  fancy  the  scene  that  then  ensued. 

Men  and  women  all  surrounded  him — the  former  with  cheeks 
streaming  with  tears,  and  the  latter  uttering  the  most  piercing  lamenta- 
tions ;  some  hung  on  his  neck,  some  got  his  hands  or  arms  to  kiss, 
while  others  threw  themselves  on  the  deck  and  embraced  his  knees. 

It  is  no  discredit  that  on  such  an  occasion  the  object  of  so  much 
affectionate  regard  was  more  than  unmanned,  and  it  was  a  long  time 
before  his  health  recovered  the  injury,  or  his  face  lost  the  sorrowful 
expression  caused  by  the  grief  of  that  parting. 

Mr.  O'Flaherty  has  read  a  good  deal,  but  thought  more,  his 
opinions  bespeak  at  once  a  noble  and  liberal  feeling  and  a  singularly 
sound  and  dispassionate  judgment,  the  grandeur  and  sublimity  of  the 
objects  by  which  he  is  surrounded  seem  to  have  sunk  into  his  soul  and 
formed  his  character.  He  is  deeply  religious,  but  altogether  free  from 
narrow  prejudice.  All  good  men  are  to  him  alike.  His  religion  has 
something  of  a  romantic  character,  and  he  feels  his  piety  more  excited 
in  the  little  deserted,  roofless  temple,  among  the  rocks,  beside  his  own 
house,  than  it  possibly  could  be  in  the  most  crowded  and  magnificent 
church.  In  this  solitary  ruin  he  offers  up  his  morning  and  evening 
prayers  ;  and  his  figure  in  the  centre  of  the  nave  looking  towards  the 
mouldering  altar,  in  the  act  of  adoration,  as  I  saw  it  once  by  chance, 
will  never  be  effaced  from  my  recollection. 

Mr.  O'Flaherty's  table  is  for  his  guests,  everything  that  a  man 
accustomed  even  to  luxurious  living  could  desire ;  but,  in  his  own 
habits,  he  is  singularly  abstemious,  rarely  taking  any  other  beverage 
than  milk,  although,  when  entertaining  his  friends,  he  conceals  his 
habits  and  sets  an  example  of  a  more  free  but  still  temperate  enjoyment. 
His  house,  however,  bespeaks  the  simplicity  of  the  place,  as  well  as  the 
usages  of  remote  times.  It  is  an  oblong,  thatched  cottage,  without 
a  second  storey,  containing  five  or  six  apartments,  with  a  long  porch, 
forming  a  kind  of  hall,  attached  to  the  centre  of  the  front.  The 
parlour  is  not  boarded,  nor  do  the  chairs  present  the  luxury  of  a  soft 
seat.  Mr.  O'Flaherty  is  of  the  middle  stature,  blue-eyed,  but  dark- 
complexioned  and  dark-haired.  His  face  is  long  and  oval,  and  in  its 
expression  mild,  philosophic  and  benevolent.  His  dress  is  that  of  the 
islanders,  differing  only  in  the  substitution  of  a  heavy  cap  for  the  hat 
usually  worn,  and  boots  for  their  rude  sandals. 

Here  is  Tom  O'Flaherty  : 

Tom  is  not  himself  an  Araner,  he  came  hither  after  the 
memorable  rebellion  of  1798,  in  which,  it  is  suspected,  he  was 


GEORGE   PETRIE  211 

somewhat  concerned,  and,  finding  an  unoccupied  theatre  for  the  display 
of  his  varied  talents,  has  continued  exercising  them  ever  since,  to  the 
perfect  satisfaction  of  all  ranks. 

Tom,  the  tailor  doctor,  is  really  what  many  doctors  are  not,  a 
clever  fellow,  he  has  a  sharp  and  clear  intellect,  and  a  singularly 
retentive  memory,  stored  with  a  variety  of  information,  historical, 
traditional,  genealogical,  and  topographical,  relative  to  the  West  of 
Ireland.  He  has  a  romantic  imagination,  and  is  never  happier,  he 
says,  than  when  wandering  about  ancient  ruins  and  among  lakes  and 
mountains.  He  is  a  great  talker,  a  great  lover  of  tobacco,  and  a 
great  drinker — not  a  great  drunkard — for  it  would  be  very  difficult  to 
make  him  drunk,  and  a  great  humorist,  qualities  which  are  all  very 
Irish.  A  pint  of  whiskey  he  considers  a  small  daily  allowance  ;  and  on 
a  late  occasion,  while  attending  Mr.  O'Flaherty  in  a  typhus  fever,  he 
was  limited  to  six  glasses,  he  begged  that  the  whisky  might  be  given 
to  him  in  three  equal  portions  or  drams,  morning  and  evening,  so  that, 
as  he  expressed  it,  "  he  might  feel  the  good  of  it." 

His  humour  is  dry  and  original ;  the  following  may  be  taken  as 
a  specimen.  Expressing  my  surprise  to  him  one  day  on  the  extent  of 
his  legendary  lore,  I  inquired  of  him  in  what  way  he  had  acquired  it. 
This  was  his  answer.  "  Faith,  an'  it's  easily  told.  Not  being  like  them 
poor  people  (the  Araners),  you  see,  but  having  an  independent  profes- 
sion," drawing  his  arms  like  a  tailor,  "  I  spent  my  time  visiting  from  one 
gentleman's  house  to  another,  and  as  I  was  always  sure  of  welcome,  and 
having  had  a  particular  taste  for  old  stories,  I  always  contrived  to  get 
myself  into  the  best  possible  situation  for  learning  them,  and  faith,  I 
may  say,  the  best  part  of  my  life  has  been  spent  there."  "Where?" 
I  inquired.  "  Faith,  just  behind  the  whisky  bottle  !  "  But  Tom 
O'Flaherty  had  other  qualities  of  a  better  order.  He  was  remarkable 
for  humanity  and  active  benevolence.  In  the  spring  of  1822  some  very 
bad  cases  of  typhus  fever  occurred  in  the  island,  one  being  that  of  a 
stranger  lately  settled  there.  The  islanders  who,  like  all  the  poor 
Irish,  have  a  deep  terror  of  this  frightful  disease,  fled  from  him ;  he 
was  without  money  or  friends,  and  must  have  perished  but  for  the 
courage  and  humanity  of  Tom  O'Flaherty.  Tom  first  removed  him  on 
his  back  from  the  infected  house  to  a  more  airy  situation,  one  of  the 
old  Irish  stone  houses  which  he  had  prepared  for  his  reception.  He 
then  went  to  Mr.  O'Flaherty  and  peremptorily  demanded  five  shillings. 
"For  what  purpose,  Tom?  Is  it  a  drink?"  said  the  other.  "No, 
trust  me  with  it  without  asking  any  questions,  I'll  make  no  bad  use  of 
it."  The  money  was  obtained,  and  immediately  sent  off  to  Galway  for 
the  sick  man.  With  this  assistance,  in  addition  to  his  own  resources, 
he  was  enabled  to  bring  the  poor  man  successfully  through  the  fever. 

P   2 


212  IRISH    LITERARY   AND    MUSICAL   STUDIES 

He  visited  him  several  times  each  day,  sat  with  him,  washed  him,  and 
performed  all  the  duties  of  a  humane  and  skilful  nurse.  At  the  same 
time  he  would  never  let  either  his  family  or  friends  know  that  he  was 
thus  employed,  but  gave  them  to  understand  that  the  man  was  dead,  and 
would  always  proceed  from  home  in  a  different  direction  from  that  which 
led  to  the  place  of  the  patient,  and  reach  it  unseen  by  a  circuitous 
route ;  nor  is  it  likely  that  he  would  ever  have  undeceived  them  if  he 
had  not  had  the  pleasure  of  bringing  back  to  society  the  man  whom  he 
had  thus  rescued  from  the  grave  .  .  .  Tom's  independent  spirit  is  equal 
to  his  other  good  qualities.  For  several  days'  attendance  on  me  to 
various  parts  of  the  island  I  could  not  induce  him  to  take  any  remunera- 
tion. I  was  also  told  that  he  had  a  strict  regard  for  truth.  I  shall 
only  add  one  more  feature  of  his  character  which  is  peculiarly  Irish — 
namely,  his  pride  of  ancestry.  Tom  boasts  the  Milesian  blood  of  the 
ancient  princes  of  Connaught.  On  tracing  Mr.  O'Flaherty's  pedigree 
for  me  one  day,  I  inquired  if  he,  too,  was  an  O'Flaherty,  "  That  I 
am,"  said  he,  drawing  himself  up  with  some  expression  of  pride,  "as 
good  a  one  as  Pat  O'Flaherty  himself." 

Father  Francis  O'Flaherty  is  a  native  of  Aranmore  and  received 
his  education  in  a  college  in  Spain.  After  spending  a  few  years  as  a 
curate  in  some  part  of  Connaught,  he  was  appointed  parish  priest  of 
his  native  Islands  whither  he  returned  never  again  to  leave  them,  and 
has  now  been  the  unassisted  teacher  of  his  flock  for  forty  years.  The 
unremittent  toils  attendant  upon  such  a  situation  may  well  be  con- 
ceived ;  but  the  dangers  with  which  they  are  here  accompanied,  and 
the  courage  necessary  to  meet  them,  can  only  be  appreciated  by  a 
recollection  of  the  singular  and  peculiar  region  to  which  his  duties 
belong — namely,  a  cluster  of  islands  washed  by  the  waves  of  the  Atlantic, 
presenting  in  most  places  an  iron  bound  coast  and  separated  from  each 
other  by  rapid  currents  that  never  assume  a  tranquil  appearance  and  are 
seldom  entirely  free  from  danger.  Courage  is,  indeed,  a  striking  trait  in 
the  character  of  this  venerable  man,  and  is  strongly  marked  on  the  lip 
and  brows  of  his  manly  but  toilworn  and  weather-beaten  countenance, 
a  face  that  a  physiognomist  would  look  at  for  hours  with  pleasure,  so 
harmonious  are  its  parts,  so  steady  its  expression  of  serious  but  mild 
thought,  and  of  manly  firmness  and  simplicity.  One  of  his  peculiarities 
was  a  too  favourable  idea  of  the  excellence  of  human  nature  in  general, 
which  afforded  the  surest  testimony  of  the  virtues  of  the  simple  people  from 
whom  his  knowledge  of  mankind  had  been  derived.  In  illustration  of 
his  belief  that  vice  or  depravity  could  not  exist  among  mankind  except 
in  the  rare  and  solitary  instances,  Dr.  Petrie  was  told  that  one  of  the 
islanders,  about  to  emigrate  to  America,  on  applying  to  a  stranger  in 


GEORGE   PETRIE  213 

the  island  for  written  instructions  how  to  act  in  a  world  of  which  he 
had  no  experience,  received  from  him  a  paper  containing  written 
advice  guarding  him  against  a  state  of  society  where  he  would  be 

kely  to  meet  many  ready  to  take  advantage  of  his  innocence  and 
inexperience.  Terrified  at  the  dangers  thus  presented  to  his  imagina- 
tion,  the  simple  Araner  submitted  it  to  Father  Frank,  that  he  might  be 
assured  whether  these  dangers  were  real ;  and  the  priest,  on  reading 
the  paper,  indignantly  tore  it  to  pieces.  « Believe  not,"  said  he 

what  this  man  says  ;  he  must  be  a  bad  man  to  lead  you  to  entertain 
so  vile  an  opinion  of  mankind.  Suspect  no  one.  There  are  I  fear 
some  bad  men  in  the  world,  but  I  trust  and  believe  they  are  few  But 
never  suspect  a  man  of  being  so  without  a  sufficient  reason." 

Father  Frank  is  poor.  The  unglazed  windows  of  his  humble 
cottage  and  the  threadbare  appearance  of  his  antique  garments  bespeak 
a  poverty  beyond  most  that  of  his  flock.  He  is,  in  fact,  altogether 
destitute  of  the  comforts  that  should  belong  to  old  age.  This  is  not 
the  fault  of  his  parishioners,  by  whom  he  is  ardently  beloved  ;  they 
would  gladly  lessen  their  own  comforts  to  increase  his,  and  have 
frequently  tried  to  force  on  him  a  better  provision,  which  he  has  as 
often  refused.  "  What,"  said  he  on  a  late  occasion  to  Mr.  O'Flaherty 
who  was  remonstrating  with  him  on  this  refusal,  "what  does  a  priest 
want  more  than  subsistence  ?  And  that  I  have.  Could  I  take  any- 
thing from  these  poor  people  to  procure  me  comforts  which  they 
require  so  much  more  themselves?  No,  no,  Pat,  say  no  more 
about  it." 


214  IRISH   LITERARY   AND   MUSICAL   STUDIES 


GEORGE   PETRIE  AS  AN   ANTIQUARY 

"  FROM  his  schoolboy  days,"  writes  my  father,  "  Petrie 
took  an  interest  in  the  monumental  remains  which  fell 
under  his  observation  in  the  neighbourhood  of  Dublin  ; 
and  as  his  sketching  tours  led  him  afterwards  into  remote 
parts  of  the  county  where  dismantled  castles  and  ruined 
churches  and  time-worn  crosses,  besides  furnishing  subjects 
for  his  pencil,  excited  his  curiosity  respecting  their  history 
and  age,  his  early  predilections  for  antiquarian  pursuits 
must  have  been  drawn  out  and  fostered. 

Nevertheless,  he  might  perhaps  have  continued  to 
devote  himself  exclusively  to  the  practices  of  his  art  as 
a  painter,  if  a  ramble  in  company  with  some  friends 
through  the  western  counties  of  Ireland  had  not  brought 
him  in  1818  face  to  face  with  the  ruins  of  the  Seven 
Churches  at  Clonmacnoise.  There,  indeed,  he  saw  a  group 
of  ecclesiastical  remains,  interesting  in  their  architectural 
features  and  picturesquely  placed  on  the  sloping  shore  of 
our  great  western  river ;  and  he  perpetuated  the  scene 
by  making  it  the  subject  of  one  of  his  most  exquisitely 
painted  pictures.  But  these  ruins  excited  a  still  deeper 
interest  in  his  mind,  regarded  as  memorials  of  men  who 
lived,  and  the  civilisation  which  subsisted  on  the  spot 
1,000  years  before. 

Looking  around  him  in  that  great  cemetery  he  was  the 
first  to  recognise  to  what  an  extent  it  was  filled  with 


GEORGE   PETRIE  215 

inscribed  monuments,  recording  the  names  of  distinguished 
persons  who  had  been  buried  there  in  former  times.  It 
was  a  favourite  place  of  sepulchre  for  kings  and  chiefs,  for 
bishops  and  abbots,  for  men  of  piety  and  learning,  from  the 
sixth  to  the  twelfth  century.  Applying  himself  first  to  the 
copying  of  these  inscriptions,  he  made  drawings  of  above 
three  hundred  of  them.  But  as  few  of  them  had  been 
previously  noted  or  explained  in  any  previous  work,  he 
was  obliged  to  investigate  for  himself  the  histories  of'  the 
persons  whose  names  were  thus  preserved.  With  a  view 
to  the  accomplishment  of  this  object,  he  commenced,  and 
from  that  time  continued,  the  formation  of  such  a  collection 
of  documents,  whether  in  manuscript  or  in  print,  as  he 
hoped  would  lead  to  the  illustration  of  the  monuments. 
After  his  visit  to  Clonmacnoise  Petrie  became  an  archaeo- 
logist, devoting  as  much  time  and  attention  as  he  could 
to  the  study  of  Irish  history  and  antiquities."  And  it 
was  time  he  did  so,  for  when,  after  his  death,  Margaret 
Stokes,  with  the  help  of  her  brother  Whitley,  published 
Petrie's  Christian  inscriptions,  its  first  volume  contained 
the  illustrations  of  165  Clonmacnoise  sepulchral  inscrip- 
tions, of  which  no  less  than  sixty-one  seen  by  Petrie  are 
now  lost,  buried  for  the  most  part,  Professor  Macalister 
believes,  in  modern  graves  with  the  object  of  sanctifying 
them. 

Here  in  Petrie's  own  words  are  some  glimpses  of  the 
impressions  made  upon  him  by  Clonmacnoise  : 

Let  the  reader  picture  to  himself  a  gentle  eminence  on  the  margin 
of  a  noble  river,  on  which,  amongst  majestic  stone  crosses  and  a  multi- 
tude of  ancient  grave-stones,  are  placed  two  lofty  round  towers  and 
the  ruins  of  seven  or  eight  churches,  presenting  almost  every  variety  of 
ancient  Christian  architecture.  A  few  lofty  ash  trees,  that  seem  of 
equal  antiquity  and  sanctity,  wave  their  nearly  leafless  branches  among 
the  silent  ruins  above  the  dead.  To  the  right  an  elevated  causeway 
carries  the  eye  along  the  river  to  the  ruins  of  an  ancient  nunnery,  and 
on  the  left  still  remain  the  ruins  of  an  old  castle,  once  the  palace  of 
the  bishops,  not  standing,  but  rather  tumbled  about  in  huge  masses  on 


2l6  IRISH    LITERARY   AND    MUSICAL   STUDIES 

the  summit  of  a  lofty  mound  or  rath,  surrounded  by  a  ditch  or  fosse, 
which  once  received  the  waters  from  the  mighty  stream,  now  no  longer 
necessary.  The  background  is  everywhere  in  perfect  harmony  with 
the  nearer  objects  of  this  picture  ;  the  chain  of  bare  hills  on  either 
side,  now  sere  and  wild,  but  once  rich  with  woodland  beauty,  shut  out 
the  inhabited  country  we  so  lately  left,  and  the  eye  and  mind  are  free 
to  wander  with  the  majestic  river  in  all  its  graceful  windings  in  an 
uninhabited  and  uninhabitable  desert,  till  it  is  lost  in  the  obscurity  of 
distance  !  Loneliness  and  silence,  save  the  sounds  of  the  elements, 
have  here  an  almost  undisturbed  reign.  Sometimes,  indeed,  the 
attention  is  drawn  by  the  scream  of  the  wildfowl,  which  inhabits  this 
solitary  region,  or  the  shot  of  the  lonely  sportsman.  At  other  times 
we  could  hear  the  measured  time  of  the  oar,  or  rather  paddle,  of  a 
solitary  boat,  long  before  the  little  speck  in  the  water  became  visible  ; 
and  the  melancholy  song  of  the  shepherd  or  the  milk-girl,  might  some- 
times be  heard  in  the  boggy  flat,  although  the  singer  was  too  remote 
to  be  visible.  To  such  sounds  I  have  been  glad  to  turn  for  company 
during  the  course  of  the  day. 

This  is  but  an  outline  of  Clonmacnoise,  such  as  may  be  intelligible 
to  general  readers.  The  deep  interest  which  this  astonishing  place 
afforded  in  detail,  can  only  be  appreciated  by  the  enthusiastic  painter 
or  accomplished  antiquary.  The  former  will  understand  the  kind  of 
delight  with  which  I  was  inspired  by  those  groups  of  pilgrims,  clothed 
in  draperies  of  the  most  picturesque  form,  and  the  most  splendid  and 
varied  colours.  The  aged  sinner,  supported  by  his  pilgrim's  staff, 
barefooted  and  bareheaded,  his  large  grey  coat,  the  substitute  for 
the  forbidden  cloak  or  mantle,  sweeping  the  road,  his  white  hair 
floating  on  the  disregarded  wind  !  The  younger  man,  similarly  attired, 
whose  face  betrays  the  deepest  guilt,  hurrying  along  with  energetic 
strides.  The  females  of  all  ages,  to  whom  uninquiring  faith  and 
enthusiastic  devotion  seem  natural  and  characteristic  ;  but,  above  all, 
the  young  and  beautiful  girl,  with  pale  face,  blue  eyes,  long  black 
eyelashes,  and  dark  hair,  whose  look  betrays  no  conscious  guilt,  in 
the  midst  of  her  sighing  prayers,  but  rather  a  feeling  of  love  and 
devotion  ;  who,  notwithstanding  her  religious  duties,  is  not  so  entirely 
unconscious  of  the  power  of  her  beauty  but  that  she  can  spare  an 
occasional  glance  towards  the  strangers  who  are  endeavouring  to  fix 
her  figure  on  their  paper  or  on  their  memories — a  figure,  as  a  friend 
well  observed,  that  no  one  but  Raphael  couM  draw. 

Happy  England  !  Well  may  she  boast  of  her  clean  and  ornamented 
cemeteries,  and  well  may  she  glory  in  her  national  mausoleum.  What 
a  contrast  do  the  former  offer  to  the  neglected  and  unsightly  grave- 
yards of  Ireland,  and  how  striking  and  impressive  the  living  splendour 


GEORGE   PETRIE  217 

of  the  latter,  as  compared  with  that  which  contains  the  best  blood  of 
Ireland  ! 

Both  are  situated  on  the  banks  of  mighty  rivers,  but  that  which 
reflects  the  lofty  towers  of  the  one,  shows  them  surrounded  with  the 
splendour  of  the  proudest  city  of  the  world,  and  it  bears  along  its 
surface  the  busy  hum  of  a  free  and  happy  people.  While  the  equally 
noble  stream  which  washes  the  banks  of  the  other,  pours  its  mass  of 
waters  through  a  desert,  and  reflects  no  object  but  the  passing  cloud 
and  "  The  round  towers  of  other  days  "  ;  and  its  silence  is  only  disturbed 
by  the  occasional  wail  for  the  dead,  or  the  scream  of  the  lonely  wild 
bird  that  haunts  its  waters.  The  temples  of  the  first  are  still  fair  and 
perfect,  for  they  have  been  since  their  foundation  objects  of  perpetual 
care  ;  those  of  the  other  are  almost  gone,  for  they  have  been  for  nearly 
the  same  period  of  time  the  objects  of  sacrilege  and  plunder,  till  its 
sanctuaries,  no  longer  worth  violating,  were  consigned  to  the  elements 
and  time  to  complete  the  work  of  ruin. 

There  is  not,  perhaps,  in  Europe  a  spot  where  the  feeling  heart 
would  find  more  matter  for  melancholy  reflection  than  among  the 
ancient  churches  of  Clonmacnoise.  Its  ruined  buildings  call  forth 
national  associations  and  ideas.  They  remind  us  of  the  arts  and 
literature,  the  piety  and  humanity,  which  distinguished  their  time,  and 
are  the  work  of  a  people,  who,  in  a  dark  age,  marched  among  the 
foremost  on  the  road  to  life  and  civilisation,  but  who  were  unfortunately 
checked  and  barbarised  by  those  who  were  journeying  in  the  same 
course  and  ought  to  have  cheered  them  on. 

Petrie  was  now  to  show  his  great  capacity  as  an  organiser 
of  archaeology  as  well  as  an  individual  worker  in  its  cull. 
He  was  elected  a  member  of  the  Royal  Irish  Academy  and 
set  to  work  at  once  in  conjunction  with  other  distinguished 
members  to  raise  the  Academy  from  that  state  of  torpor  in 
which  it  had  remained  for  the  previous  quarter  of  a  century. 
As  an  instance  of  the  apathy  which  had  prevailed  in  its 
management  it  may  be  mentioned  that  the  King  of 
Denmark  had  some  time  before  presented  the  Academy 
with  a  fine  collection  of  stone  implements.  These  had, 
however,  been  allowed  to  lie  unnoticed  and  uncared  for. 
Similar  antiquarian  gifts  to  the  Academy  had  actually  been 
deposited  in  the  Museum  of  Trinity  College  for  want  of  a 
fitting  place  for  their  exhibition  within  the  Academy's  walls. 
Indeed,  Petrie  told  my  father  that  between  the  time  when 


2l8  IRISH    LITERARY   AND   MUSICAL   STUDIES 

he  first  saw  them,  and  that  when,  as  a  member  of  the 
Council,  he  rescued  them  from  future  danger,  nearly  one- 
half  of  these  articles,  and  those  the  most  precious,  had 
disappeared.  From  this  epoch  dated  a  period  of  fruitful 
activity  in  the  Academy  Committee  of  Antiquities,  the 
meetings  of  which  had  been  actually  suspended  for  the 
seventeen  years  previous.  My  father  was  then  secretary, 
and  he  and  Petrie  and  others  helped  forward  the  acquisition 
of  the  various  collections,  such  as  the  Underwood  Collection 
and  those  of  Dean  Dawson  and  Major  Sirr,  the  assemblage 
of  which  in  the  Academy's  museum  has  given  it  a  national 
character. 

Inspired  by  Petrie's  scientific  spirit  in  his  method  of 
dealing  with  antiquities,  the  great  Irish  mathematician 
MacCullagh  purchased  the  Cross  of  Cong,  and  made  that 
splendid  donation  to  the  Academy,  besides  contributing 
most  generously  towards  the  purchase  of  the  Tara  golden 
torques.  Petrie's  contributions  towards  the  Academy's 
library  were  perhaps  even  more  important. 

"Whenever,11  writes  my  father,  "opportunities  afforded  of  acquiring 
Irish  MSS.,  he  exerted  his  influence  to  induce  the  Academy  to  pur- 
chase them.  The  grant  placed  at  his  disposal  for  this  purpose  being 
often  inadequate,  he  ventured  more  than  once  at  his  own  risk  to  secure 
MSS.,  the  value  of  which  he  understood  better  than  anyone,  and  which 
he  knew  ought  to  be  added  to  the  Academy's  collection.  Thus  at  the 
sale  of  Edward  O'Reilly's  MSS.,  after  the  Academy's  grant  of  ^50 
had  been  exhausted,  he  purchased  for  himself  some  of  the  O'Cleary's 
MSS.,  and  afterwards  gave  them  up  to  the  Academy  at  cost  price. 
Having  had  the  good  fortune  under  similar  circumstances  to  become 
the  possessor  of  the  autograph  copy  of  the  second  part  of  The  Annals 
of  the  Four  Masters  he  generously  surrendered  it  to  the  Academy  for 
the  sum  he  had  given  for  it,  although,  immediately  on  its  becoming 
known  in  the  sale  room  what  the  MS.  was,  he  was  offered,  in  the  first 
instance,  £100  over  and  above  the  purchase  money,  and  was  afterwards 
pressed  to  name  any  sum  that  would  induce  him  to  resign  it.  In 
acknowledgment  of  the  generosity  and  zeal  evinced  on  this  occasion 
by  Petrie,  the  Academy  passed  a  resolution  declaring  him  a  member 
for  life." 


GEORGE   PETRIE  219 

Petrie  contributed  many  papers  to  the  transactions 
of  the  Academy,  for  three  of  which  he  was  awarded  its 
gold  medal.  These  were  his  Origin  and  Uses  of  the 
Round  Towers,  afterwards  expanded  into  his  famous  work 
on  the  subject;  his  essay  on  Military  Architecture  in 
Ireland,  and  his  essay  on  Tara  Hill.  The  second  in 
order  of  these  still  remains  unpublished. 

The  essay  on  the  Irish  Round  Towers  by  which  Petrie 
has  made  a  world-wide  reputation,  calls  for  our  interested 
attention.  These  remarkable  towers  had  attracted  the 
observation  of  all  Irish  antiquaries,  but  the  most  astonish- 
ing difference  of  opinion  had  been  displayed  in  the  views 
taken  of  them.  They  had  been  described  as  Danish  or 
Phoenician  in  origin,  and  had  been  considered  by  some 
to  be  fire  temples;  by  others,  places  from  which  the 
Druidical  festivals  were  proclaimed;  by  others,  again, 
they  were  supposed  to  be  astronomical  observatories 
or  phallic  emblems  or  Buddhist  temples.  Lastly,  to 
come  to  supposed  Christian  uses,  some  theorists  held 
them  to  be  Anchorite  towers;  others  insisted  that  they 
were  penitential  prisons. 

The  antiquaries  who  held  these  views  belonged  to  the  old 
deductive  school.  Petrie  was  an  inductive  archaeologist. 
No  doubt,  as  my  father  writes  : 

There  is  something  romantic  in  the  notion  of  their  being  monuments 
belonging  to  a  race  wholly  lost  in  the  mist  of  antiquity,  and  there  is 
something  imposing  in  the  parade  of  Oriental  authorities  and  the  jingle 
of  fanciful  etymologies  in  which  Valiancy  and  his  disciples  so  freely 
dealt.  But  I  have  never  yet  met  any  intelligent  man  who  has  taken 
the  pains  to  read  through  and  understand  Petrie's  essay  and  who  has 
also  gone  out  of  his  study  and  examined  round  towers  with  his  own 
eyes,  and  compared  their  masonry  and  architectural  details  with  those 
of  the  ancient  ecclesiastical  structures,  beside  which  they  often  stand, 
who  is  not  ready  to  give  his  frank  assent.  I  am  speaking  of  the  most 
remarkable  essay  that  was  ever  produced  by  an  Irish  antiquary.  You 
will  therefore  permit  me  to  remind  you  what  those  conclusions  were  : 
(i)  that  the  towers  are  of  Christian  and  ecclesiastical  origin,  and  were 
erected  at  various  periods  between  the  fifth  and  thirteenth  centuries  ; 


220  IRISH   LITERARY   AND   MUSICAL   STUDIES 

(2)  that  they  were  designed  to  answer  at  least  a  two-fold  use — namely, 
to  serve  as  belfries  and  as  keeps  or  places  of  strength  in  which  the 
sacred  utensils,  books,  relics,  and  other  valuables  were  deposited,  and 
into  which  the  ecclesiastics,  to  whom  they  belonged,  could  retire  for 
security  in  cases  of  sudden  predatory  attack  ;  (3)  that  they  were 
probably  also  used  when  occasion  required  as  beacons  anil  watch 
towers.  If  it  were  possible  to  overthrow  or  seriously  to  modify  the 
conclusions  at  which  Petrie  has  arrived  his  essay  would  still  continue 
to  be  a  pattern  deserving  the  close  imitation  of  writers  undertaking  to 
treat  of  similar  subjects.  It  is  philosophic  in  its  method  ;  its  style  is 
clear  and  graceful  without  being  pedantic  ;  it  is  copious  in  reference  to 
original  authorities ;  and,  what  is  rare  in  works  of  a  controversial  nature, 
it  is  remarkable  for  the  good  temper  and  good  taste  with  which  the 
writer  treats  the  reasonings  of  his  opponents. 

Moreover,  Petrie  has  proved  beyond  doubt  in  this  great 
ecclesiastical  essay  that  churches  exist  in  Ireland  that  go 
back  to  the  fifth  century,  that  others  exhibiting  decorated 
details  were  founded  in  Ireland  before  the  Norman  Con- 
quest, that  there  are  evidences  of  the  decorations  of  shrines 
from  the  ninth  to  the  fifteenth  century,  that  the  principal 
cross  at  Clonmacnoise  indicates  that  the  Irish  artists  in  the 
tenth  century  were  experienced  and  imaginative  sculptors, 
and  that  while  the  ornamental  work  of  the  ancient  churches 
differs  remarkably  from  that  seen  on  the  Norman  buildings 
of  England,  it  is  in  perfect  accord  with  that  of  the  Irish 
illuminated  MSS.,  jewelled  reliquaries,  sculptured  crosses  and 
inscribed  tombstones.  He  thus  disposed  for  ever  of  the 
aspersions  upon  the  barbarity  and  want  of  civilisation 
imputed  to  the  early  and  mediaeval  Irish  by  writers  such  as 
Pinkerton.* 

A  second  prize  of  £20  was  given  to  Mr.  O'Brien 
who  skilfully  supported  the  contention  that  the  Round 
Towers  were  of  Danish  origin,  and  Sir  William  Betham 
wrote  a  most  virulent  attack  against  the  decision  of  the 
Council,  maintaining  that  O'Brien's  view  was  the  correct 
one.  To  Sir  William's  letter  Petrie  replied  with  great 

*  Churches  and  Oratories. 


GEORGE   PETRIE  221 

dignity,  but  with  hitting  powers  of  which  he  had  not  been 
suspected.* 

The  circumstances,  my  father  points  out,  which  must  be 
considered  the  most  important  in  Petrie's  life  as  giving 
definiteness  to  his  labours  and  completely  developing  his 
powers,  was  his  employment  to  take  charge  of  the  Topo- 
graphical Department  of  the  Irish  Ordnance  Survey  in  the 
year  1833.  The  occasion  for  his  services  arose  thus. 
In  the  construction  of  the  maps  it  was  a  matter  of  primary 
necessity  to  determine  the  orthography  of  the  names  of 
places;  but  it  also  proved  to  be  a  matter  of  extreme 
difficulty. 

Various  modes  of  spelling  were  found  to  be  sanctioned 
by  common  usage.  Reference,  therefore,  had  to  be  made  to 
documents  of  all  kinds ;  and  an  inquiry  involving  com- 
parison between  the  existing  and  the  ancient  state  of  the 
country  had  to  be  instituted ;  in  fact,  questions  relating  to 
the  spelling  of  a  town-land  or  a  parish  frequently  gave  rise 
to  elaborate  researches,  which  were  not  disposed  of  until  it 
had  been  ascertained  that  the  name  was  indicative  of  some 
early  sept,  some  ecclesiastical  establishment,  or  ancient 
chief.  Thus  the  co-operation  of  the  historian,  the  antiquary 
and  the  philologist  was  found  to  be  essential.  The  work 
was  under  the  direction  of  Lieutenant,  afterwards  Sir, 
Thomas  Larcom,  who  conceived  the  idea  of  drawing 
together  every  species  of  local  information  relating  to 
Ireland,  and  embodying  it  in  a  Memoir  accompanying  the 
Ordnance  Survey  maps. 

Here,  as  the  head  of  a  literary  staff,  Petrie  had  the 
assistance  of  several  persons  who  possessed  a  good  know- 
ledge of  the  Irish  language,  and  to  whom  he  communicated 
his  own  methods  of  systematic  inquiry  and  the  refinement  of 
a  more  extended  scholarship.  It  was  from  Petrie  that  John 
O'Donovan  and  Eugene  O'Curry  received  the  training  which 
enabled  them  afterwards  to  contribute  in  so  many  ways  to 
*  Illustrations  of  Round  Towers. 


222  IRISH   LITERARY   AND    MUSICAL   STUDIES 

that  great  development  of  Irish  literature  which  took  place 
between  1840  and  1866.  "  Thus  Petrie  became  the  informing 
spirit  and  great  instructor  of  a  School  of  Archaeology,  not 
only  laying  down  the  principles  but  exemplifying  upon  a 
large  scale  the  application  to  Antiquarian  Science  of  the 
principles  of  a  philosophic  induction.  He  first  showed  how 
to  make  the  contents  of  our  Irish  MSS.  available  for  the 
purposes  of  antiquarian  research.  He  had  large  collections 
made  from  passages  bearing  upon  questions  of  topography, 
history,  architecture,  and  so  forth,  and  he  took  pains  to 
satisfy  himself  that  the  true  meaning  of  these  was  furnished 
by  scholars  having  a  competent  knowledge  of  the  Irish 
language.  He  explored  almost  every  part  of  Ireland  him- 
self, filling  in  sketch  books  with  careful  drawings  of  ancient 
remains ;  and  it  was  by  means  of  a  comparison  of  these 
with  one  another,  and  with  the  notices  of  them  contained  in 
ancient  documents,  that  he  established  general  and  solid 
conclusions  respecting  their  nature. 

It  is  true  that  the  literary  and  ecclesiastical  history  of 
Ireland  had  received  important  elucidations  from  the 
labours  of  Archbishop  Ussher,  Sir  James  Ware  and  Colgan, 
but  before  Petrie's  time  little  had  been  done  to  illustrate  our 
topography,  our  prehistoric  monuments,  our  military  and 
ecclesiastical  architecture."  Thus  writes  my  father.  But  a 
great  disappointment  awaited  all  believers  in  the  value  of 
the  great  antiquarian  work  being  done  for  the  Irish  Ordnance 
Survey  by  Petrie  and  his  staff,  which  included  besides 
O'Donovan  and  O'Curry,  O'Conor  and  Mangan.  A  full, 
accurate  and  intensely  interesting  memoir  of  the  county 
of  Derry  was  published,  and  hailed  with  delight  and  pride 
by  all  patriotic  Irishmen.  But  unfortunately  the  very  finish 
and  detail  of  the  work  caused  its  interruption.  The 
question  became  a  Treasury  one,  and  all  Irishmen  know 
what  that  means.  The  Memoir  of  Londonderry  had  hardly 
appeared  when  difficulties  arose  as  to  the  cost  of  its 
publication.  As  Dr.  Stokes  writes,  this  led  to  a  partial 


GEORGE   PETRIE  323 

suspension  of  the  topographical  survey,  and  finally  its 
operations  were  put  an  end  to  by  the  Master-General  of  the 
Ordnance.  The  staff  were  discharged,  and  the  vast  mass  of 
material,  comprising  among  other  things,  upward  of  four 
hundred  quarto  volumes  of  letters  and  documents  relating 
to  the  topography,  language,  history,  antiquities,  produc- 
tions and  social  state  of  almost  every  county  in  Ireland, 
were  directed  to  be  kept  in  the  Central  Office  of  the 
Survey. 

Here  is  Mr.  Wakeman's  sketch  of  the  work  and  workers 
of  the  Ordnance  Survey  led  by  Mr.  Petrie  himself : 

How  well  do  I  recollect  my  first  sketching  journey,  when  employed 
on  the  intended  Ordnance  memoir.  Dr.  Petrie  was  the  head  of  that 
particular  department  of  the  survey  to  which  I  was  attached.  In  the 
little  back  parlour  in  Great  Charles  Street  we  used  to  meet  daily  ;  by 
we,  I  mean  John  O'Donovan,  Eugene  O'Curry,  Clarence  Mangan, 
P.  O'Keefe,  J.  O'Connor,  besides  two  or  three  more.  The  duty  of 
the  office  was  to  collect  every  possible  information,  antiquarian  or 
topographical,  about  that  particular  portion  of  the  country  which  was 
at  the  time  being  surveyed.  All  sorts  of  old  documents  were  examined, 
old  spellings  of  names  compared  and  considered.  O'Donovan  and 
O'Curry,  even  then  the  first  Celtic  scholars  of  the  age,  settled  the 
orthography  of  the  towns,  villages,  baronies,  or  other  divisions  of  land, 
so  that  the  Ordnance  map  might  be  as  correct,  in  a  literary  sense,  as 
they  undoubtedly  were  as  surveys.  At  the  same  time  Petrie's  great 
work  on  the  Ecclesiastical  Architecture  of  Ireland,  as  also  his  admirable 
essay  On  the  Antiquities  of  Tara  Hill,  were  being  completed.  Indeed, 
we  lived  in  such  an  atmosphere  of  antiquarianism,  that  a  thousand 
years  ago  seemed  as  familiar  to  us  as  the  time  when  we  first  donned 
breeches.  For  my  own  part,  I  felt  as  if  I  had  a  personal  acquaintance 
with  Niall  of  the  Nine  Hostages,  or  Con  of  the  Hundred  Battles  (or 
bottles,  as  poor  Mangan  humorously  mis-styled  the  hero),  or  with 
Leogaire,  who  would  not  mind  the  exhortations  of  St.  Patrick,  but 
insisted  on  being  interred,  sword  in  hand,  in  his  rath  at  Tara,  with  his 
face  turned  to  the  east,  as  bidding  defiance  to  the  men  of  Leinster. 
Petrie,  as  head  of  the  office,  superintended  everything ;  and  the  mass 
of  antiquarian  and  topographical  information  collected  far  exceeded 
the  expectations  of  the  most  sanguine.  A  miserable  system  of  false 
economy  caused  the  memoir  to  be  abandoned  ;  and,  from  the  character 
of  the  matter  collected,  we  can  judge  how  great  has  been  our  loss  that 
the  work  had  not  been  continued  for  at  least  a  few  years  longer.  I 


224  IRISH    LITERARY   AND    MUSICAL   STUDIES 

should  like  to  dwell  a  moment  on  the  scene  of  that  very  happy  time 
when  we  used  to  meet  in  Dr.  Petrie's  back  parlour.  There  was  our 
venerable  chief,  with  his  ever-ready  smile  and  gracious  word  ;  then 
poor  Clarence  Mangan,  with  his  queer  puns  and  jokes  and  odd  little 
cloak  and  wonderful  hat,  which  exactly  resembled  those  that  broom- 
stick-riding witches  are  usually  represented  with,  his  flax-coloured  wig, 
and  false  teeth,  and  the  inevitable  bottle  of  tar-water,  from  which  he 
would  sip  and  sip  all  day — except  when  asleep,  with  a  plain  deal  desk 
for  a  pillow.  By-the-by,  it  was  in  that  office  Mangan  penned  his  since 
famous  ballad,  The  Woman  of  Three  Cows,  and  I  verily  believe  the 
composition  did  not  occupy  him  half  an  hour.  Mangan  was  a  man  of 
many  peculiarities.  In  addition  to  the  curious  hat  and  little  round 
cloak,  he  made  himself  conspicuous  by  wearing  a  huge  pair  of  green 
spectacles,  which  had  the  effect  of  setting  off  his  singularly  wan  and 
wax-like  countenance  with  as  much  force  as  might  be  accomplished  by 
the  contrast  of  colour.  Sometimes,  even  in  the  most  settled  weather, 
he  might  be  seen  parading  the  streets  with  a  very  voluminous  umbrella 
under  each  arm. 

At  this  time  O'Donovan  was  about  thirty  years  of  age.  As  in  the 
case  of  almost  every  roan  who  has  risen  to  distinction,  he  was  an 
unwearied  worker,  never  sparing  himself,  and  evidently  holding  his 
occupation  a  labour  of  love.  With  all  employed  in  the  office  he  was 
a  general  favourite,  and  in  the  intervals  between  his  most  serious 
business  would  often  give  us  some  of  his  experiences  as  a  traveller, 
telling  his  tale  in  a  rich  emphatic  manner  peculiarly  his  own. 

Then  there  was  O'Connor,  the  companion  of  O'Donovan  in  very 
many  of  his  topographical  expeditions,  a  man  of  kindly  feeling,  and 
possessed  of  a  very  considerable  amount  of  information  on  Irish 
subjects.  He  died  early,  however,  and  without  having  given  more 
than  a  promise  of  taking  a  high  place  amongst  those  who  have  made 
Irish  history  and  antiquities  their  peculiar  study.  I  must  also  mention 
P.  O'Keefe,  perhaps  at  that  time  the  most  learned  and  accomplished 
of  all  men  employed  in  Petrie's  department  of  the  survey.  His  duties 
were  very  similar  to  those  of  O'Donovan,  and  his  loss  to  the  survey, 
when  he  retired  to  a  non-literary  or  antiquarian  life,  was  consider- 
ably felt. 

At  the  time  I  write  of,  Eugene  Curry  had  really  commenced  that 
course  of  application  to  the  illustration  of  ancient  Irish  history  which 
has  gained  for  him  the  proud  appellation  of  the  Chief  Brehon  and 
Lexicographer  of  Ireland.  He,  too,  belonged  to  our  staff,  and,  during 
the  summer  time,  was  engaged  chiefly  in  travelling  and  collecting 
information  about  old  names  and  places  for  the  use  of  the  Ordnance 
authorities. 


GEORGE    PETRIE  22$ 


Years  passed  away,  and  then,  through  the  exertions  of 
Viscount  Adare,  afterwards  Earl  of  Dunraven,  a  large  and 
remarkable  meeting  was  held  in  London,  at  which  it  was 
agreed   that   a   deputation  should   wait   upon   Sir   Robert 
Peel  and  press   upon    him   the   resumption  of  the    inter- 
rupted Ordnance  Survey  work.     Sir  Robert  consented  to 
appoint  a  Commission  to  take  evidence  and  report  on  the 
entire    question.       This    Commission,    consisting    of  Lord 
Adare,  Mr.  Young,  a  Lord  of  the  Treasury,  and  the  Clerk 
of  the  Ordnance,  Captain  Boldero,  took  evidence,  on  the 
strength   of  which    they    unanimously    recommended   the 
resumption  of  the  Ordnance  Survey  work  on  the  lines  upon 
which  it  had  been  previously  conducted.     But  as  happens 
with  Irish  Commissions  only  too  often,  its  Report  bore  no 
fruit,  and  in  the  estimates  for  the  following  year  no  notice 
was  taken  of  the  Survey  so  far  as  its  topographical  and 
historical  department  was  concerned.     The  vast  stores  of 
unpublished  information  were  deposited  in  the  offices  of 
Mount  Joy  Barracks,  but  on  application  from  the  Royal 
Irish  Academy  for  the  custody  of  a  portion  of  these  records, 
more  than  one  hundred  volumes  of  manuscripts  with  eleven 
volumes  of  antiquarian  drawings,  fully  indexed  and  bound, 
were  presented  to  the  Academy    in  November,  1860.     A 
warm  vote  of  thanks  was  paid  to  Sir  Thomas  Larcom,  the 
Academy    recognising    the    gift    "as   the    most   valuable 
accession  ever  made  to  their  library,"   and  expressing  the 
belief  that  scholars  engaged  in  historical  and  topographical 
studies  would  largely  avail  themselves  of  the  materials  thus 
liberally  placed  within  their  reach.     To  this  store  some  of 
our  antiquaries  have  certainly  gone,  notably  Dr.  Joyce,  who 
must  there  have  found  material  for  much  of  the   matter 
contained  in  his  delightful  Irish  Names  of  Places 

Dr.  Stokes's   comment   on   the  action  of  the   Englisl 
Government  in  this  affair  is  as  follows  : 

In   its  endeavours  to  draw  closer   together   the  ties   of  friendship 
between  the  countries  and  to  foster  goodwill  and  peace,  the  educated 


226  IRISH   LITERARY   AND   MUSICAL   STUDIES 

mind  of  England  has  felt  and  complained  of  the  want  of  reliable  in- 
formation as  to  the  social  state  and  history  of  the  Irish  people.  Here 
would  have  been  the  knowledge  so  wanting,  undisturbed  by  politics, 
passions  or  sectarianism. 

But  it  was  unhappily  rejected  while  the  means  through  the  agency 
of  which  such  success  had  been  obtained  was  broken  up  and  scattered 
abroad. 

Looking  at  the  relative  conditions  of  Great  Britain  and  Ireland,  at 
the  social  relations  of  the  countries,  at  the  ignorance  of  the  Irish  as 
well  as  the  English  public,  of  the  true  history  and  resources  of  Ireland, 
and  at  the  desire  expressed  by  all  classes  for  the  completion  of  the 
work,  it  is  hardly  too  much  to  say  that  this  step  was  an  error  in  states- 
manship of  the  greatest  magnitude. 

During  this  Ordnance  Survey  period  of  Petrie's  career 
he  wrote  a  number  of  delightful  letters  to  Larcom, 
Dunraven  and  O'Donovan,  keeping  them  in  touch  with 
the  work  as  it  progressed,  advising  or  correcting  his 
subordinates,  always  in  the  best  humour,  and  even 
when,  as  in  the  case  of  O'Donovan,  a  little  feeling  was 
excited,  it  was  soon  smoothed  down  by  his  unfailing 
justice  and  tact.  Here  are  just  a  few  extracts  from  his 
correspondence : 

My  dear  Larcom,  The  whole  of  this  ancient  territory  of  West 
Connaught  is  as  yet  the  region  of  romance,  with  its  solitary  lakes 
and  mountains,  its — 

Desert  isles  and  fairy  lands  forlorn, 

the  simplicity  and  honesty  of  its  inhabitants,  the  costumes  of  the 
women  so  exquisitely  beautiful  and  simple — exactly  as  if  they  had 
stepped  out  of  the  pictures  of  Raphael  or  Murillo.  By  the  way,  I 
never  saw  so  much  beauty  of  female  form  in  a  wild  district  before  as 
I  have  met  in  this,  and  what  is  very  remarkable,  their  hands  are  quite 
aristocratic,  small  and  elegantly  formed  in  the  highest  degree.  Burton, 
the  artist,  who  is  one  of  our  party,  is  almost  mad  with  delight.  He  is 
a  charming  fellow,  and  his  company  adds  greatly  to  the  pleasure  of  my 
journey. 

Here  is  an  extract  from  a  letter  to  Lord   Dunraven, 


GEORGE   PETRIE  227 

combating   the  suggestion  that  he  was   dilatory  over  his 
preparation  of  the  work  of  the  Round  Towers  : 

I  assure  you  solemnly  that  I  never  worked  so  hard  and  un- 
remittingly in  my  life  as  I  have  at  this  for  the  last  eight  or  ten  months 
I  go  to  work  every  day  immediately  after  breakfast,  and  never  stir  till 
four  or  half-past  four  o'clock,  when,  if  the  weather  be  fine,  I  turn  out  for 
a  little  exercise  before  dinner.  Then  in  the  evenings  I  generally  read 
to  prepare  myself  for  the  day  following.  I  refuse  all  invitations  to  go 
out  lest  it  might  interfere  with  my  habits,  and  when  I  tell  you  that 
within  the  last  fortnight  I  refused  going  with  Stokes  to  lona,  which  I 
have  long  desired  to  visit,  and  with  Smith  and  Kane  to  the  County 
Wicklow  for  a  few  days,  you  will,  I  trust,  give  me  some  credit  for 
firmness  and  devotion  to  my  work.  Rut  the  truth  is,  though  I  say  it 
as  should  not,  the  said  work  is  a  great  labour,  and  particularly  from 
my  anxiety  to  make  it  accurate  on  all  points. 

This  is  an  interesting  passage,  for  it  explains  much,  at 
any  rate,  of  the  causes  which  led  to  the  belief  that  Petrie 
was  somewhat  of  a  dilettante.  The  fact  was  that  he  was 
extremely  hard  to  please  over  his  own  work,  and  his  con- 
scientiousness was  such  that  it  occasionally  delayed  his 
literary  labour  to  a  degree  that  provoked  the  remonstrance 
of  even  his  friends.  This  charge  of  dilatoriness  has  thus 
been  answered  on  Petrie's  behalf  by  my  father  : 

Petrie  may  not  have  been  blameless  in  this  regard,  but  I  think 
that  valid  excuses  may  be  offered  in  mitigation  of  the  censure  which 
has  fallen  upon  him.  In  the  first  place,  his  health  was  always  delicate 
and  his  temperament  sensitive,  thus  his  total  working  power  was  less 
than  that  of  many  other  literary  men  ;  his  intense  intellectual  energy 
was  out  of  proportion  with  his  physical  strength,  and  besides  all  this 
he  was  intentionally  slow  in  his  work,  whether  with  the  pencil  or  the 
pen,  because  he  was  cautious  and  truthful  and  in  the  highest  degree 
fastidious. 

In  1840  Petrie  received  the  gold  medal  of  the  Academy 
for  his  essay  On  the  Antiquities  of  Tara  Hill.  This  essay, 
printed  in  the  eighteenth  volume  of  Transactions  of  the 
Royal  Irish  Academy,  was  a  portion  of  the  memoir  intended 
to  accompany  the  Ordnance  Survey  map  of  the  county  of 
Meath.  I  adopt  my  father's  summary  of  it.  Its  subject,  as 

Q  2 


228  IRISH    LITERARY   AND   MUSICAL   STUDIES 

the  title  indicates,  is  partly  antiquarian,  and  partly  historical ; 
and  it  deserves  special  notice,  because  the  latter  element  is 
developed  more  perfectly  in  it  than  in  any  other  of  Petrie's 
writings.  Having  gathered  from  our  most  ancient  manuscripts 
every  notice  contained  in  them  of  the  Hill  of  Tara — a  spot 
celebrated  by  foreign  as  well  as  native  writers  as  the  chief 
seat  of  the  Irish  monarchs,  from  the  earliest  dawn  of  their 
history  down  to  the  middle  of  the  sixth  century — he  pro- 
ceeds, in  the  first  instance,  to  analyse  those  which  record 
events  connected  with  the  civil  and  ecclesiastical  history  of 
Ireland,  and  then  goes  on  to  show  the  exact  agreement  of 
the  monuments  still  remaining  with  the  descriptions  of  raths 
and  other  structures  mentioned  in  ancient  topographical 
poems  and  tracts  as  having  formely  existed  at  Tara.  The 
first  portion  of  the  paper  touches  upon  several  subjects  of 
great  interest.  Such,  for  instance,  is  the  account  of  the 
compilation  and  promulgation  of  laws  by  Cormac  Mac  Art, 
in  the  middle  of  the  third  century ;  and  the  compilation, 
two  hundred  years  later,  of  the  Scanchus  Mor,  in  the  time 
and  at  the  instance  of  St.  Patrick.  The  hints  which  he  has 
given  in  this  paper  will  afford  valuable  help  towards  the 
settlement  of  some  of  the  most  perplexing  questions  con- 
nected with  our  early  Irish  history.  Though  we  may  feel 
sure  that  the  catalogue  of  142  kings  who  are  recorded  as 
having  reigned  at  Tara  prior  to  its  desertion  in  the  year  565 
is  largely  mythical,  we  should  be  rash  in  totally  rejecting  all 
the  statements  for  which  we  have  no  better  authority  than 
bardic  legends.  Petrie  has  pointed  out  the  probability  of 
some  of  these,  and  adduced  confirmations  of  them,  derived 
from  independent  and  trustworthy  sources.  One  of  the 
most  curious  parts  of  the  essay  on  Tara  is  that  in  which  he 
discusses  the  perplexing  difficulties  which  beset  the  history 
of  St.  Patrick — I  might  rather  say,  of  the  Saints  Patrick,  for 
there  were  certainly  two  of  the  name— and  proposes  to 
identify  the  second  St.  Patrick  with  Palladius.  The  recent 
investigation  of  this  subject  by  Dr.  Todd  has  brought  its 


GEORGE   PETRIE  22Q 

difficulties  into  a  clearer  light;  but  the  solution  of  them  seems 
still  almost  beyond  our  reach.  The  second  portion  of  the 
essay  furnishes  a  striking  instance  of  the  use  to  be  made 
of  antiquarian  research  in  establishing  the  authenticity  of 
documents.  The  Dinn  Seanc/ms,  a  well-known  topographi- 
cal work  of  great  antiquity,  contains  tracts  and  poems 
relating  to  Tara,  some  of  which  describe  with  considerable 
minuteness  the  buildings  which  formerly  stood  there.  With 
the  buildings  so  described  Petrie  was  able  with  complete 
certainty  to  identify  the  crumbling  remains  which  are  still 
apparent.  Such  a  confirmation  of  the  accuracy  of  the 
accounts  disposes  us  to  attach  more  credence  than  we 
should  otherwise  have  given  to  statements  respecting  the 
uses  to  which  the  various  structures  were  applied,  and  all 
the  details  respecting  the  mode  of  life  of  their'  ancient 
occupants.  The  truth  of  these  very  ancient  testimonies 
being  corroborated  in  certain  points,  the  probability  of 
their  being  in  the  main  trustworthy  is  increased  in  a  high 
degree. 

The  results  arrived  at  by  Petrie  on  the  subject  of  Irish 
Military  Architecture  were  equally  important  and  en- 
lightening, and  these  may  be  thus  briefly  summarised.  That 
Cambrensis  was  wrong  in  denying  castles  to  Ireland 
before  the  Norman  occupation,  such  castles  having  been 
erected,  though  in  small  numbers,  shortly  before  that 
occupation,  and  among  these  the  Castle  of  Tuam.  These 
castles  were  round  and  not  as  lofty  as  the  Round  Towers. 

Petrie,  in  opposition  to  current  belief,  held  that  the 
Danes  built  few  castles  in  Ireland,  but  that  older  forms  of 
defensive  architecture  under  the  names  of  Caisel,  Rath,  Lis, 
Dun,  Cathair,  Mur  and  Tur  existed  in  large  numbers  before 
the  first  Danish  invasion;  that  the  Cathairs  exceed  all 
other  Irish  fortifications  in  interest  and  historic  importance, 
and  that  they  occur  constantly  in  the  west  and  south  of 
Ireland,  and  are  probably  of  Greek  origin. 

As    Count   Plunkett   has   so   well   pointed   out,   Petrie 


230  IRISH    LITERARY   AND   MUSICAL   STUDIES 

was  not  merely  a  man  of  scientific  spirit,  he  was  also  a 
poet.  He  had  the  intuitions  of  the  seer,  and  he  divined 
what  he  afterwards  proved  by  link  after  link  of  careful 
investigation. 

His  main  contentions  have  been -upheld,  and  even  in 
matters  of  detail  his  views  have  been  confirmed  by  subse- 
quent antiquaries  in  the  most  surprising  manner. 


GEORGE    PETRIE    AS    A    MUSICIAN    AND 
AMONGST    HIS   FRIENDS 

How  early  Petrie's  love  for  Irish  music  had  been  is  shown 
by  this  anecdote  communicated  to  me  by  Dr.  Joyce,  as  it 
had  been  related  to  him  by  Petrie  himself: 

When  Petrie  was  a  boy  he  was  a  good  player  upon  a  little  single- 
ksyed  flute. 

One  day  he  and  some  young  companions  set  out  for  a  visit  to 
Glendalough,  then  in  its  primitive  state  of  solitude.  While  passing 
Luggelaw  they  heard  a  girl  near  at  hand  singing  a  beautiful  air. 
Instantly  out  came  paper  and  pencil,  and  Petrie  took  it  down,  and  then 
played  it  on  his  little  flute.  His  companions  were  charmed  with  it ;  and 
for  the  rest  of  the  journey— every  couple  of  miles  when  they  sat  down  to 
rest,  they  cried,  "Here,  Petrie,  out  with  your  flute  and  give  us  that 
lovely  tune."  That  tune  is  now  known  as  Luggelaw,  and  to  it  Thomas 
Moore,  to  whom  Petrie  gave  it,  wrote  his  words  (as  lovely  as  the 
music),  No,  not  more  -welcome,  referring  to  Grattan's  pleadings  for 
his  country. 

And  this  brings  us  to  George  Petrie's  famous  collection  of 
Irish  music,  in  the  gathering  of  which  he  had  been  engaged 
with  passionate  interest  from  his  seventeenth  till  after  his 
seventieth  year. 

At  first  he  freely  gave  these  folk  airs  to  Thomas  Moore 
and  Francis  Holden,  and  even  offered  the  use  of  his  whole 
collection  to  Edward  Bunting.  But  finally,  for  fear  that 
the  priceless  hoard  might  be  neglected  or  lost  after  his 
death,  and  also  as  a  protest  against  the  methods  of  noting 
and  dealing  with  the  airs  pursued  by  Edward  Bunting  and 
Moore  and  Stevenson  respectively,  Petrie  agreed  to  edit 
his  collection  for  "The  Society  for  the  Preservation  and 


232  IRISH    LITERARY   AND   MUSICAL   STUDIES 

Publication  of  the  Ancient  Music  of  Ireland,"  which  was 
founded  in  December,  1851. 

One  volume  of  this  collection,  comprising,  however, 
only  about  a  tenth  part  of  it,  saw  the  light  in  1857.  A 
supplement  contains  thirty-six  airs,  some  of  which  Dr. 
Stokes  tells  us  were  sent  to  Petrie  by  personal  friends, 
such  as  Thomas  Davis  the  patriot,  William  Allingham  the 
poet,  Frederick  Burton  the  painter,  and  Patrick  MacDowell 
the  sculptor;  "whilst  physicians,  students,  parish  priests, 
Irish  scholars  and  college  librarians  all  aided  in  the  good 
work.  But  most  of  Petrie's  airs  have  been  noted  by  himself 
from  the  singing  of  the  people,  the  chanting  of  some  poor 
ballad-singer,  the  song  of  the  emigrant — of  peasant  girls 
while  milking  their  cows,  or  performing  their  daily  round  of 
household  duty — from  the  playing  of  wandering  musicians, 
or  from  the  whistling  of  farmers  and  ploughmen."  And 
this  description  by  Dr.  Stokes  is  typical  of  the  method  by 
which  the  airs  were  obtained,  in  this  instance  on  the  islands 
of  Aran  : 

Inquiries  having  been  made  as  to  the  names  of  persons  "  who  had 
music,"  that  is,  who  were  known  as  possessing  and  singing  the  old 
airs,  an  appointment  was  made  with  one  or  two  of  them  to  meet  the 
members  of  the  party  at  some  cottage  near  to  the  little  village  of 
Kilronan,  which  was  their  headquarters. 

To  this  cottage,  when  evening  fell,  Petrie,  with  his  manuscript 
music-book  and  violin,  and  always  accompanied  by  his  friend, 
Professor  Eugene  O'Curry,  the  famous  Irish  scholar,  used  to  proceed. 

Nothing  could  exceed  the  strange  picturesqueness  of  the  scenes 
which  night  after  night  were  thus  presented. 

On  approaching  the  house,  always  lighted  up  by  a  blazing  turf  fire, 
it  was  seen  to  be  surrounded  by  the  islanders,  while  its  interior  was 
crowded  by  figures,  the  rich  colours  of  whose  dresses,  heightened  by 
the  firelight,  showed  with  a  strange  vividness  and  variety,  while  their 
fine  countenances  were  all  animated  with  curiosity  and  pleasure. 

It  would  have  required  a  Rembrandt  to  paint  the  scene.  The 
minstrel — sometimes  an  old  woman,  sometimes  a  beautiful  girl  or 
a  young  man — was  seated  on  a  low  stool  in  the  chimney  corner,  while 
chairs  for  Petrie  and  O'Curry  were  placed  opposite,  the  rest  of  the 
crowded  audience  remaining  standing.  The  singer  recommenced, 


GEORGE   PETRIE  233 

stopping  at  every  two  or  three  bars  of  the  melody  to  permit  the  writing 
of  the  notes,  and  often  repeating  the  passage  until  it  was  correctly 
taken  down,  and  then  going  on  with  the  melody  exactly  from  the 
point  where  the  singing  was  interrupted.  The  entire  air  being  at  last 
obtained,  the  singer,  a  second  time,  was  called  to  give  the  song  con- 
tinuously, and  when  all  corrections  had  been  made,  the  violin— an 
instrument  of  great  sweetness  and  power — was  produced,  and  the  air 
played  as  Petrie  alone  could  play  it,  and  often  repeated. 

Never  was  the  inherent  love  of  music  among  the  Irish  people  more 
shown  than  on  this  occasion ;  they  listened  with  deep  attention, 
while  their  heart-felt  pleasure  was  expressed,  less  by  exclamations  than 
by  gestures  ;  and  when  the  music  ceased,  a  general  and  murmured  con- 
versation, in  their  own  language,  took  place,  which  would  continue  till 
the  next  song  was  commenced. 

When  Dr.  Joyce  was  quite  a  young  man  he  sent  Petrie 
some  beautiful  folk  songs  which  he  had,  as  a  lad,  collected 
in  his  native  Glenosheen.  Petrie  was  delighted  with  these, 
and  Joyce  became  a  frequent  caller  at  the  doctor's  house 
and  heard  his  songs  sung  by  Petrie's  daughter  Mary,  who 
in  her  youth  was  very  beautiful ;  Sir  Frederick  Burton's 
picture  of "  The  Blind  Girl  at  the  Well "  is  an  admirable  like- 
ness of  her  at  that  period.  "  How  well,"  writes  Dr.  Joyce, 
"  I  recollect  the  procedure  when  I  returned  to  Dublin  from 
my  vacation.  One  of  the  first  things  was  to  spend  an 
evening  with  the  whole  family,  the  father  and  the  four 
daughters,  when  Mary  went  through  my  new  collection  on 
the  piano  with  the  rest  listening,  especially  Petrie  himself, 
in  wrapt  delight,  as  she  came  across  some  exquisite  air  he 
had  not  heard  before.  But  of  all  the  airs  he  was  most 
delighted  with  'The  Wicked  Kerry  Man,'  now  in  my 
Ancient  Irish  Music,  page  84." 

Some  further  airs  drawn  from  the  Petrie  collection,  after 
the  publication  of  the  volume  of  1857,  have  apeared  in  the 
form  of  piano  arrangements  by  Francis  Hoffmann,  and  in 
vocal  settings  in  Songs  of  Old  Ireland,  Songs  of  Erin,  and 
Irish  Folk  Songs,  published  by  Boosey  and  Co.,  and  in  Irish 
Songs  and  Ballads,  published  by  Novello,  Ewer  and  Co. 
Now,  however,  the  entire  collection  of  about  1,800  airs 


234  IRISH   LITERARY   AND   MUSICAL   STUDIES 

in  purely  melodic  form,  exactly  as  they  were  noted  down 
by  Petrie — a  vast  treasure-house  of  folk  song,  has  been 
published  by  Messrs.  Boosey  and  Co.,  for  our  Irish  Literary 
Society  under  the  editorship  of  Sir  Charles  V.  Stanford. 

And  now  for  Petrie  among  his  friends. 

Here  is  a  sketch  by  one  of  them,  Samuel,  afterwards 
Sir  Samuel  Ferguson,  showing  him  amongst  his  friends  of 
the  Royal  Irish  Academy  at  one  of  their  meetings  : 

The  Provost  of  the  University  presides.  His  son,  the  distinguished 
Humphrey  Lloyd,  sits  near  him.  That  animated  individual  with  the 
eager  eye  and  broad  forehead,  who  is  reading  the  formula  from  the 
demonstrating  board,  is  Sir  William  Hamilton,  the  illustrious  mathe- 
matician and  astronomer.  This  intelligent-looking  personage,  whose 
countenance  combines  so  much  gravity  and  liveliness,  is  the  Archbishop 
of  Dublin.  There  is  Petrie — he  with  the  Grecian  brow,  long  hair,  and 
dark  complexion — the  accomplished  antiquary  ;  and  here  is  Pirn,  the 
introducer  of  railroads  into  Ireland.  Here  sits  the  scientific  Portlock, 
with  Apjohn,  our  leading  chemist ;  and  this  is  Stokes,  the  great 
physician  of  the  lungs.  .  .  .  And  who  are  these  who  have  just 
entered — one  with  a  light  step,  huge  frame,  sharp  Irish  features  and 
columnar  forehead  ;  the  other  lower  in  stature,  of  a  paler  complexion, 
large  featured,  with  the  absent  aspect  of  a  man  of  learning?  They  are 
Carleton,  author  of  the  Traits  and  Stories  of  the  Irish  Peasantry,  and 
Anster,  the  translator  of  Faust. 

I  may  here  say  that  on  the  only  occasion  on  which  I 
myself  met  Petrie,  Dr.  Anster  was  of  the  company,  other 
men  of  note  being  Leopold  von  Ranke,  the  historian  of 
the  Popes  (my  father's  brother-in-law),  my  father  himself, 
Dr.  Ingram,  Dr.  Mahaffy,  and  Dr.  Dowden. 

"  In  the  choice  of  his  friends,"  writes  Lady  Ferguson, 
"  he  was  uninfluenced  by  political  considerations,  or  any 
narrow  feeling  of  sectarianism,  a  quality  which  none  but 
those  who  know  Ireland  can  sufficiently  admire  or  estimate. 
Loving  his  country  and  feeling  for  her  wrongs,  he  was 
liberal  in  politics,  though  from  angry  passions  he  ever  held 
aloof.  At  once  a  loyalist  and  a  patriot,  a  combination 
which,  in  these  days,  is  in  some  minds  unintelligible,  he 
saw  the  real  obstacles  to  his  country's  weal,  in  her  want  of 


GEORGE    PETRIE  235 

healthy  public  opinion  and  self-respect,  and  gave  the  labour 
of  his  life  to  overcome  them."  And  to  quote  my  father,  in 
this  connection,  "  he  largely  helped  towards  achieving  the 
great  problem  of  our  day— the  reconciliation  of  the  cultivated 
intelligence  and  loyalty,  with  the  popular  aspirations  and 
the  sympathies  of  the  country." 

William  Stokes,  Petrie's  biographer  and  father  of  Whitley 
and  Margaret  Stokes,  was  in  his  day  one  of  the  foremost 
physicians  of  the  world.  "  He  was  a  rarely  gifted  man," 
writes  Lady  Ferguson,  "  a  man  of  genius,  and  yet  eminently 
practical.  A  lucid  writer,  a  profound  and  most  accurate 
clinical  observer,  he  was  early  recognised  as  a  master  in  his 
profession.  But  he  was  also  a  skilful  practitioner,  at  once 
full  of  kindness  and  sympathy,  observant  of  every  symptom, 
and  rich  in  resource.  At  the  bedside  he  inspired  confi- 
dence, and  often  affection.  As  a  teacher  he  was  constantly 
followed  by  crowds  of  admiring  students.  Like  most  men 
of  real  power,  he  had  many  interests  and  pursuits  outside 
of  his  professional  sphere.  He  was  a  keen  archaeologist, 
a  true  lover  of  his  country.  The  tenderness  of  his  nature 
and  his  brilliant  wit  and  humour  were  only  manifested  on 
occasion,  for  his  manner  was  often  abstracted,  but  his 
domestic  affection  and  his  love  for  his  chosen  friends  never 
failed.  It  was  riot  everybody  that  could  win  his  friendship," 
as  Petrie  had  done.  And  I  can  speak  to  a  similar  friend- 
ship between  him  and  my  own  father,  and  between  him  and 
Lord  Adare,  afterwards  the  Earl  of  Dunraven,  Sir  Thomas 
Larcom,  and  of  course  Whitley  and  Margaret  Stokes. 
Frederick  Burton  was  also  a  close  friend,  and  O'Curry  and 
O'Donovan,  first  his  assistants  on  the  Ordnance  Survey, 
were  always  afterwards  his  friends.  Who  indeed  of  note 
in  Ireland  at  that  day  was  not  a  friend  of  "  dear  Petrie," 
as  he  was  universally  called  by  his  intimates. 

"In  1857,"  writes  Lady  Ferguson,  "the  British  Association  met  in 
Dublin,  and  the  Ethnological  section  went  on  an  excursion  to  Aran  of 
the  Saints.  Stokes,  Petrie,  Burton,  O'Curry  were  of  the  party,  and 


236  IRISH    LITERARY   AND    MUSICAL    STUDIES 

remained  behind  with  Ferguson,  who  secured  a  roomy  cottage  and 
wrote  to  his  wife  to  join  him  with  their  nephews,  a  servant  and  a  well- 
stocked  hamper.  Dr.  Stokes  wrote  for  his  wife,  son  and  daughter. 

The  combined  party  chartered  a  hooker  with  its  crew  and  retained, 
as  guide,  the  local  antiquary,"  doubtless  Tom  O'Flaherty,  whose 
portrait,  drawn  by  Petrie,  has  already  been  presented. 

"  The  friends,  so  congenial  in  their  tastes,  passed  a  few  weeks  of 
entire  enjoyment. 

They  sailed  from  island  to  island,  taking  with  them  on  board  the 
hooker  all  the  local  singers  of  whom  they  could  hear.  The  music  they 
sang  was  noted  by  Petrie  and  rendered  on  his  violin — the  Irish  words 
recorded  by  O'Curry  and  translated  by  Whitley  Stokes.  Burton  painted 
the  peasants  and  their  children,  and  he  and  Ferguson  and  Margaret 
Stokes  sketched  the  ruins  and  other  antiquarian  objects,  while  Whitley 
Stokes  worked  at  the  ancient  inscriptions.  The  weather  was  pro- 
pitious, and  the  friends  thoroughly  enjoyed  the  out-of-door  life,  the 
pure  air,  and  refreshing  sea-breezes. 

An  incident  of  their  sojourn  which  might  have  had  serious  results 
may  be  recalled  to  memory.  They  had  landed  on  Inismaen,  leaving 
one  man  only  in  charge  of  the  hooker,  and,  taking  the  rest  of  the  crew 
on  shore  to  carry  their  dinner  to  the  pagan  fort  on  the  summit  of  the 
island,  proceeded  to  explore  Inismaen.  When  the  meal  was  over  and 
the  hamper  repacked,  they  descended,  towards  evening,  to  the  place 
where  they  had  left  the  hooker  ;  but  no  boat  was  visible  on  the  wide 
horizon.  At  last,  at  a  great  distance,  off  the  coast  of  Connemara,  the 
vessel  was  descried  slowly  making  for  Inismaen.  It  was  apparent  that 
many  hours  must  elapse  before  the  boat  could  arrive,  and  as  the  sun 
had  set,  and  no  shelter  was  possible,  dancing  for  the  sake  of  warmth 
was  resorted  to  by  the  shivering  party.  At  last  the  hooker,  manoeuvred 
by  its  one  man,  arrived.  He,  when  left  in  charge,  had  lighted  his 
pipe,  and  under  its  soothing  influence  had  fallen  asleep.  The  boat 
drifted  with  the  tide,  and  was  almost  on  the  rocks  off  the  mainland 
when  the  sleeper  was  aroused  by  shouts  from  another  vessel.  With 
great  difficulty  he  navigated  his  way  back.  It  was  almost  midnight 
when  the  party  were  under  weigh  for  Aran  Mor.  The  ocean  was 
luminous ;  the  track  of  the  curragh — a  light  canvas  boat  in  which  to 
land — was  a  veritable  line  of  light.  Every  movement  of  its  oars 
seemed  to  cleave  through  molten  fire,  and  to  reveal  marvels  of  nature 
before  undreamt  of.  The  lustrous  waves  beneath,  the  silent  stars  over- 
head, the  dim  outline  of  the  rocky  shore,  and  its  utter  solitude,  impressed 
and  solemnised  our  spirits.  It  was  an  adventure  not  to  be  forgotten." 

And   here   is   another   engaging   account  of  a  holiday 


GEORGE   PETRIE  237 

ramble  in  which  Petrie  and  his  friends  took  part.  Ferguson 
and  his  wife,  absent  on  their  vacation  rambles  in  1864, 
were  joined  in  Sligo  by  their  young  English  friends,  Henry 
and  William  Winterbotham,  afterwards  Parliamentary 
Secretary  for  the  Home  Department  and  Member  for 
Stroud,  respectively.  "  I  come  to  Ireland  for  the  enjoy- 
ment of  your  society,"  wrote  the  elder  brother ;  "  and  when- 
ever you  are  pleased  to  delve  I  am  ready  to  hold  the  hod," 
a  reference  to  Sir  Samuel  Ferguson's  antiquarian  digging. 

Here,  too,  came  the  Rev.  Hercules  Dickinson,  later  to 
become  Dean  of  the  Chapel  Royal,  Petrie,  Dr.  James 
Henthorn  Todd,  the  famous  scholar  and  antiquary,  Dr. 
Stokes  and  his  daughter  Margaret. 

"  Notwithstanding  the  dreary  and  tempestuous  weather,"  writes 
Lady  Ferguson,  "  the  group  of  friends  had  much  enjoyment  in  congenial 
society,  added  to  the  interest  of  the  antiquities  and  scenery.  The  fine 
cliffs,  which  at  Slieve  League  rise  to  the  height  of  1,800  feet  above  the 
Atlantic,  are  belted  with  lichens  of  brilliant  hues.  But  in  the  autumn 
of  1864  the  country,  the  crops,  and  the  inhabitants  suffered  from  the 
almost  continuous  rains,  which  made  the  chief  food  of  the  people — the 
potatoes — more  than  usually  wet  and  waxy.  Sickness  supervened,  and 
when  it  became  known  that  a  great  physician  was  sojourning  at  the 
hotel,  Stokes  was  besieged  every  morning  with  petitions  that  he  would 
visit  the  sufferers  in  their  cabins.  The  doctor,  ever  ready  to  assist  the 
poor,  would  take  .down  all  addresses,  return  to  the  breakfast  table, 
crumble  some  bread,  crush  a  few  lumps  of  sugar,  and  to  these  add  a 
little  white  powder — probably  some  preparation  of  soda  or  magnesia — 
which  he  carried  in  a  tiny  box.  With  these  ingredients  he  made  pills, 
which  he  placed  in  his  waistcoat  pocket.  We  started  every  day  for 
some  scene  of  archaeological  interest,  where  all  but  the  doctor  and  the 
present  writer  were  set  to  sketch  the  various  objects.  They  then 
proceeded  on  a  round  of  medical  visits.  The  sufferers  were  generally 
aged  peasants.  'A  weakness  about  the  heart,'  an  'oppression  on 
the  chest,'  and  rheumatic  pains,  were  the  ills  of  which  they  chiefly 
complained.  Dr.  Stokes's  manner  was  full  of  sympathy.  He  listened, 
with  his  hand  on  the  pulse,  to  all  they  had  to  say,  with  the  utmost 
patience.  Then  he  prescribed,  invariably  the  same  remedy.  With  the 
pills — which  were  to  be  taken  at  stated  intervals — he  produced  half-a- 
crown,  with  strict  instructions  to  apply  it  to  the  purchase  of  mutton 
chops,  one  of  which  was  to  be  eaten  daily.  When  rallied  by  his 


238  IRISH    LITERARY   AND    MUSICAL   STUDIES 

companion  on  the  uniform  treatment  ordered  for  every  complaint, 
'  My  dear  friend,'  he  would  say,  '  in  whatever  way  these  poor  people 
describe  their  sensations,  their  ailments  spring  from  the  same  cause — no 
change  of  diet,  and  their  only  food  a  wet  root.  The  chops  will  do 
them  good  so  long  as  they  last.  As  for  their  rheumatism,  it  is  slightly 
intensified  by  the  wetness  of  this  season — that  is  all.'  He  would 
discourse,  as  we  made  our  way  across  meadows,  bogs  and  streams, 
from  one  poor  habitation  to  another,  on  the  philosophy  of  health  and 
disease,  and  extort  the  admiration  and  respect  of  his  listener  by  the 
wide  range  of  his  knowledge  and  th-  depth  of  his  sympathy  for  the 
suffering  and  sorrowful  condition. 

The  labours  of  the  day  were  closed  by  a  festive  dinner,  ending  with 
a  bowl  of  punch,  untouched  by  the  juniors,  but  enjoyed  in  moderation 
by  the  seniors.  Conversation,  flavoured  with  '  Attic  salt,'  genial 
humour,  and  sparkling  wit,  combined  to  make  the  repast 

The  feast  of  reason  and  the  flow  of  soul. 

Then  came  the  solace  and  refreshment  of  music.  Petrie's  violin  was 
placed  entreatingly  in  his  hands  by  one  of  the  younger  members  of  the 
party,  whose  reverent  and  affectionate  attentions  to  the  elders  were 
touching  to  witness,  and  soon 

Amid  the  strings  his  fingers  strayed 

And  an  uncertain  warbling  made, 

And  oft  he  shook  his  hoary  head. 

But  when  he  caught  the  measure  wild, 

The  old  man  raised  his  face  and  smiled." 

Petrie  was  not  only  a  friend  of  humanity  but  devotedly 
fond  of  animals,  horses,  dogs,  cats  and,  indeed,  as  I  may 
say,  of  all  living  creatures.  Dr.  Stokes  tells  this  very 
characteristic  story  of  him  in  this  connection. 

"  During  Petrie's  residence  in  Charles  Street,  the  kitten  of 
his  favourite  cat  had  its  leg  broken,  when  he  rushed  out  for 
one  of  his  friends — then  a  practising  surgeon,  but  failed  to 
find  him ;  he  then  called  on  another,  but  had  hardly 
knocked  at  the  door,  when,  for  the  first  time,  the  singularity 
of  his  position  struck  him;  for  a  moment  he  thought  of 
leaving  the  door,  but  waited  to  apologise  for  calling.  The 
door  was  opened,  he  was  forced  to  come  in,  the  candles 
were  lit  in  the  study,  and  the  servant,  regardless  of  Petrie's 
remonstrances,  ran  upstairs  for  his  master,  who  was  in  bed. 


GEORGE   PETRIE  239 

In  a  few  minutes  the  surgeon  came  down,  carrying  his  boots 
in  his  hand,  and  assuring  him  that  no  apologies  were 
necessary,  he  donned  his  hat  and  cloak,  and  accompanied 
him  to  the  house,  when  Petrie,  almost  dumb  with  confusion, 
at  last  took  courage  to  tell  the  nature  of  the  case ;  the  good- 
humoured  answer  was— 'Well,  let  me  see  the  patient,  at  all 
events.'  He  was  brought  to  the  kitten,  the  limb  was 
carefully  put  up,  and  the  surgeon,  refusing  his  fee,  promised 
to  call  next  day;  but  as  Petrie  went  to  show  him  to  the 
door,  the  old  cat,  who  had  been  watching  the  entire  pro- 
ceeding, sprang  on  the  table,  and  carried  her  kitten  to  the 
corner  of  the  room.  She  then  proceeded  to  undo  all  the 
bandages,  deliberately  taking  out  pin  by  pin,  while  Petrie 
watched  in  amazement,  and  the  splints  being  removed,  she 
commenced  licking  the  part,  and  thus  continued  with  hardly 
an  intermission  for  some  days  and  nights,  when  a  cure  was 
effected  without  the  slightest  deformity  ! " 

Petrie's  manifold  services  to  his  native  land  were  soon 
to  end.  During  the  spring  of  1865,  feeling  that  his  time 
would  not  be  long,  he  devoted  himself  to  cataloguing  his 
museum,  now  included  in  the  National  Museum  of  Ireland. 
This  he  did  with  an  energy  which  led  him  to  give  up  his 
usual  exercise,  and  on  the  i;th  January,  1866,  after  an 
illness  that  entailed  no  suffering  and  was  unattended  by  any 
failure  of  intellect,  he  peacefully  expired  in  the  arms  of  his 
children.  "He  died,"  as  his  biographer  writes,  "as  a 
Christian  man  should  do,  not  in  triumph,  nor  yet  in  gloom, 
but  in  calm  resignation  to  the  will  of  Him  Who  doeth  all 
things  well." 

His  remains  were  followed  to  the  tomb  by  the  members 
of  the  Royal  Irish  Academy ;  they  rest  in  a  grave  without 
an  epitaph  in  the  cemetery  of  Mount  Jerome. 

But  I  am  glad  to  believe  that  these  three  lectures  *  to  his 

*  This  and  the  two  papers  on  George  Petrie  which  immediately 
precede  it  in  this  volume  were  delivered  at  Alexandra  College,  Dublin, 
as  the  three  "  Margaret  Stokes  Memorial  Lectures  "  for  1912. 


240  IRISH    LITERARY    AND    MUSICAL    STUDIES 

memory  and  that  of  his  dear  friend,  co-artist,  co-antiquary 
and  co-musician,  Margaret  Stokes,  are  likely  to  prove  the 
cause  of  the  erection  of  a  worthy  monument  over  the 
remains  of  our  greatest  Irish  Antiquary,  "dear  Petrie,"  as 
we  can  all  now  unite  to  call  him. 

I  conclude  with  a  character  sketch  of  Petrie  by  my 
father,  contained  in  the  Eloge,  which,  as  its  President,  he 
delivered  before  the  Royal  Irish  Academy  shortly  after  his 
friend's  death : 

Petrie  united  qualities  which  are  seldom  possessed  by  the  same 
individual ;  he  had  the  enthusiasm  and  the  imaginative  power  which 
are  essential  to  the  artist ;  he  also  possessed  the  sagacity  and  calmness 
of  judgment  which  are  commonly  supposed  to  be  characteristic  of  the 
man  of  science.  There  was  in  him  a  singular  gracefulness,  combined 
with  masculine  force.  He  was  sensitive,  without  being  morbid  ;  he 
was  playful,  but  never  wayward  ;  he  was  candid  in  criticism,  but  never 
gave  a  gratuitous  wound  to  the  feelings  of  an  opponent.  "  He  exerted," 
as  has  been  well  said,  "  an  influence  which  prompted  and  encouraged 
many  minds  in  liberal  ideas — in  genial  and  tolerant  social  views — in 
the  elegancies  of  native  accomplishments,  and  in  that  appreciation  of 
the  generous  criticism  which  discovers  the  good  achieved  rather  than 
the  shortcomings  in  works  of  literature  and  of  art — an  influence  which 
gave  a  rare  charm  to  his  society." 

He  often  declared  that  though  always  a  poor  man,  his  life  had 
been  one  of  great  enjoyment,  greater  than  falls  to  the  lot  of  most  men, 
and  that  his  chief  happiness  was  in  the  society  of  so  many  loving, 
lasting,  and  intellectual  friends. 


LONDON  :     PRINTED   BY  WILLIAM   CLOWES  AND  SONS,    LIMITED. 


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